Description

A flaw was found in WebKitGTK. Processing malicious web content can cause a use-after-free issue due to improper memory handling and result in memory corruption.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "8.8",
  "pubDate": "2026-08-24T14:17:05.390Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-08-24T14:17:05.390Z",
  "executiveSummary": "A critical memory corruption vulnerability exists within WebKitGTK, specifically categorized as a use-after-free issue resulting from improper memory management during the processing of malicious web content. This flaw impacts WebKitGTK across supported configurations, posing severe risk implications to confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Successful exploitation of this vulnerability allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to execute arbitrary code within the context of the application by enticing a user to process maliciously crafted web content. The exploitation requirements rely on victim interaction, typically requiring the user to navigate to a compromised website or render a malicious webpage. Consequently, successful execution can lead to application crashes, unauthorized data access, or full system compromise depending on the privilege level of the host process running the affected WebKitGTK instance.",
  "technicalDetails": "The vulnerability stems from an improper memory handling flaw within the WebKitGTK rendering engine, specifically manifesting as a use-after-free condition during the lifecycle management of objects involved in parsing or rendering malicious web content. Root cause analysis of typical use-after-free scenarios in this component indicates that a heap-allocated object is prematurely deallocated while internal references or pointers to the memory address remain active within the execution context. When the application subsequently attempts to dereference these dangling pointers, unpredictable memory manipulation occurs. The attack flow commences when a user accesses a specially crafted webpage containing malicious HTML, JavaScript, or cascading style sheets designed to trigger specific object allocation and deallocation sequences within the rendering pipeline. As the engine processes the malicious content, race conditions or logical errors in object lifetime management cause the target resource to be freed while still referenced. An attacker who can reliably control the heap layout and manipulate the contents of the newly freed memory chunk via heap grooming techniques can achieve arbitrary code execution. Network exposure is present whenever the vulnerable browser engine processes untrusted web traffic, requiring no prior authentication or elevated privileges. Post-exploitation impact includes the potential override of critical control data, leading to remote code execution within the security context of the rendering process, sandbox escapes if secondary vulnerabilities are chained, or denial of service through application termination."
}