Description

Improper input validation in ANGLE in Google Chrome on on Mac prior to 152.0.7977.65 allowed a remote attacker 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": "8.8",
  "pubDate": "2026-08-25T21:18:17.183Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-08-25T21:18:17.183Z",
  "executiveSummary": "A critical security vulnerability has been identified within the ANGLE (Almost Native Graphics Layer Engine) component of the Google Chrome browser on macOS.\nThe vulnerability is classified as an improper input validation flaw, which allows a remote attacker to bypass browser security controls.\nThe primary impact of this vulnerability is the potential for arbitrary code execution outside the browser's sandbox environment.\nAffected systems include Google Chrome on macOS versions prior to 152.0.7977.65.\nThe vulnerability requires no specific authentication, enabling an unauthenticated remote attacker to compromise the host system through a specially crafted HTML page.\nThe Chromium security severity for this issue is rated as Medium, reflecting the significant risk posed to system integrity and user data confidentiality should an attacker successfully break out of the sandbox.\nThe vulnerability represents a failure in the sanitization of inputs processed by the graphics abstraction layer, facilitating potential memory corruption or logic flaws that lead to system-level execution.",
  "technicalDetails": "The vulnerability resides within the ANGLE component, which serves as a standards-compliant OpenGL ES implementation for Chromium. The root cause is identified as improper input validation during the processing of graphics-related instructions or data streams within the abstraction layer.\nWhen a user navigates to a malicious web page, the browser initiates the rendering process, which leverages ANGLE to translate web-based graphics calls into hardware-specific API calls (such as Metal or OpenGL). The flaw exists when the validation logic fails to sufficiently verify the parameters, bounds, or types of input provided to the ANGLE engine.\nAn attacker can exploit this by injecting a crafted HTML page containing malicious shaders, textures, or buffer data designed to trigger the validation oversight. Because ANGLE operates as a bridge between the browser's high-level graphics APIs and the underlying OS-level drivers, an input validation error can lead to memory corruption, such as a buffer overflow, use-after-free, or out-of-bounds access within the graphics process context.\nThe attack flow follows a structured progression: First, the attacker lures the victim to a site hosting the malicious payload. Upon loading, the browser's rendering engine interacts with the vulnerable ANGLE component to process the embedded graphics data. Due to the lack of strict input sanitization, the processing logic writes data into unauthorized memory regions or misinterprets control flow instructions.\nCrucially, the vulnerability facilitates execution outside the sandbox. Typically, Chromium employs a multi-process architecture where the renderer is heavily sandboxed to prevent direct system access. By leveraging the input validation flaw, the attacker may escalate their privileges from the compromised renderer process to the host system level by exploiting the interface between the graphics driver and the browser process, or by leveraging the IPC (Inter-Process Communication) mechanisms that interact with the vulnerable component.\nPost-exploitation, the attacker achieves arbitrary code execution, granting them the ability to perform unauthorized operations with the privileges of the logged-in user. This bypasses the security isolation provided by the Chromium sandbox, effectively subverting the core security model of the web browser. The flaw does not require the user to have elevated administrative privileges to trigger, as the execution occurs within the context of the browser's process tree."
}