Description

Use after free in Views in Google Chrome prior to 152.0.7977.65 allowed a remote attacker leveraging social engineering to potentially execute arbitrary code outside the sandbox via a crafted HTML page. (Chromium security severity: Medium)

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "9.6",
  "pubDate": "2026-08-25T21:17:50.410Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-08-25T21:17:50.410Z",
  "executiveSummary": "A critical Use-After-Free (UAF) vulnerability has been identified within the Views component of Google Chrome prior to version 152.0.7977.65.\nThe vulnerability occurs due to improper memory management, where a pointer to a deallocated memory region is accessed, potentially allowing an attacker to trigger arbitrary code execution.\nSuccessful exploitation requires social engineering to entice a user into navigating to a malicious HTML page designed to leverage the memory corruption.\nAlthough categorized as Medium severity, the impact is significant as it potentially allows a remote attacker to achieve execution outside the browser's security sandbox.\nThis flaw presents a substantial risk to user data integrity and system security, as malicious code execution at the process level can bypass existing sandboxing constraints.\nDefensive posture necessitates immediate browser updates to version 152.0.7977.65 or later to mitigate exposure to this vulnerability.",
  "technicalDetails": "The vulnerability resides in the Views framework, which serves as the UI toolkit component within the Chromium architecture. A Use-After-Free condition occurs when the application attempts to access a heap-allocated memory object that has already been released (freed).\nRoot cause analysis indicates that a specific object lifecycle management issue exists where a reference to a UI element is held or incorrectly cleared, leading to a dangling pointer. If an attacker can force the application to perform an operation on this dangling pointer after the underlying memory has been reallocated for a different purpose, they can achieve control over the program's execution flow.\nExploitation follows a multi-stage process: 1) The attacker hosts a specially crafted HTML page designed to trigger the specific sequence of events leading to the premature deallocation of the target Views object. 2) The attacker employs heap spraying or a similar technique to place attacker-controlled data into the recently freed memory region. 3) The application attempts to interact with the dangling pointer, triggering an operation on the attacker-supplied memory content.\nBecause the vulnerability exists in the Views subsystem, the subsequent access occurs within a context that, if successfully manipulated, allows for the diversion of execution flow. The capability to execute code outside the sandbox indicates that the exploit bypasses standard browser isolation mechanisms, likely targeting the browser process or another higher-privileged component that utilizes the Views framework.\nThe attack is remotely exploitable, requiring no prior authentication or elevated privileges beyond the interaction of the end user via social engineering. The impact is limited only by the attacker's ability to reliably craft the memory heap state to achieve precise control over the instruction pointer or data structures used in sensitive function calls.\nAffected versions include all releases of Google Chrome preceding 152.0.7977.65. The vulnerability manifests in the browser's rendering engine interactions with the UI subsystem, confirming that the scope of impact extends beyond simple rendering engine exploits into higher-level UI component failures."
}