Description

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

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "9.6",
  "pubDate": "2026-08-25T21:18:00.473Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-08-25T21:18:00.473Z",
  "executiveSummary": "A high-severity Use-After-Free (UAF) vulnerability has been identified within the Views component of Google Chrome, affecting versions prior to 152.0.7977.65.\nThe flaw allows a remote, unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code outside the browser sandbox environment.\nExploitation requires the attacker to employ social engineering techniques to entice a user into navigating to a specifically crafted, malicious HTML page.\nSuccessful exploitation compromises the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of the host system, as the vulnerability facilitates arbitrary code execution with the permissions of the targeted user.\nThis vulnerability represents a critical security risk due to the potential for complete system compromise and the bypass of browser-level sandboxing protections.",
  "technicalDetails": "The vulnerability originates from an improper memory management condition within the Views UI framework in Chromium.\nA Use-After-Free (UAF) condition occurs when memory is accessed after it has been deallocated, which can lead to unpredictable behavior if the memory has been reallocated to a different object.\nIn this specific instance, the flaw exists within the component responsible for rendering and managing interface elements. A remote attacker can trigger this state through a crafted HTML page that manipulates the lifecycle of a particular view object.\nThe attack flow begins when the user visits the attacker-controlled URL. The malicious HTML content contains scripts or DOM manipulations designed to induce a specific sequence of object creation and destruction within the browser's render process.\nBy causing the Views component to retain a reference to a freed pointer, the attacker effectively gains the ability to perform a 'use' operation on that dangling pointer.\nWhen the memory is subsequently reallocated for a new object controlled by the attacker, the browser unknowingly performs operations on the attacker-controlled memory area while believing it is interacting with a legitimate system object.\nThis mismatch provides the primitives necessary for heap grooming and control flow hijacking.\nBecause the vulnerability facilitates execution outside the Chrome sandbox, the attacker successfully bypasses the primary security boundary intended to contain browser-based exploits.\nThis signifies that the exploit can influence the underlying operating system environment, potentially leading to privilege escalation or further persistence.\nThe vulnerability does not require authentication or elevated privileges, relying entirely on successful social engineering to lure the user to the malicious URI.\nThe root cause is a race condition or logic error in the object lifecycle management within the Chromium Views framework, which fails to properly invalidate pointers after the associated memory is released."
}