Another zero-day vulnerability has been identified in the Google Chrome desktop application, just days after the previous emergency update was released. Microsoft have determined this to be a publicly disclosed vulnerability with a verified exploit. The stable channel update for desktop version 112.0.5615.137 was released last week for Windows and Mac, with the Linux update to roll out soon. This update patches 8 vulnerabilities, including one high severity flaw that Google have confirmed to be actively exploited in the wild.  

 Tracked as CVE-2023-2136, this is recorded as a high severity flaw with a CVSS base score of 8.8. This vulnerability affects the Skia graphic engine, which is used by Chromium Open Source Software (OSS), therefore affecting all chromium-based browsers and products. This is an integer overflow vulnerability within Skia which has been able to be exploited by remote attackers. If these attackers are able to get the vulnerable browser to access a malicious HTML page crafted specifically for this attack, then they can begin the exploit by compromising the render process within this graphics engine. This allows them to perform a sandbox escape, which could then result in further memory corruption, arbitrary code execution, or unauthorised system access. Despite the public discloser and active exploitation of this flaw, Google have not released the full details of this exploit and so the final results of this attack have been estimated based on the type of vulnerability and few pieces of attack data available.  

This vulnerability exists within the Chromium OSS that is consumed by Microsoft Edge. Microsoft’s update guide informs users that the latest version of Microsoft Edge is patched for this flaw and no longer vulnerable. Users should therefore update all chromium-based browsers to the latest available versions, not just Google Chrome, as soon as possible. This vulnerability has also been added to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) known exploited vulnerabilities catalog where some of the other affected products are listed, including Android and Flutter.