Google Patches Yet Another Actively Exploited Chrome Zero-Day Vulnerability

May 16, 2024NewsroomBrowser Security / Vulnerability

Google has rolled out fixes to address a set of nine security issues in its Chrome browser, including a new zero-day that has been exploited in the wild.

Assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2024-4947, the vulnerability relates to a type confusion bug in the V8 JavaScript and WebAssembly engine. It was reported by Kaspersky researchers Vasily Berdnikov and Boris Larin on May 13, 2024.

Type confusion vulnerabilities arise when a program attempts to access a resource with an incompatible type. It can have serious impacts as it allows threat actors to perform out-of-bounds memory access, cause a crash, and execute arbitrary code.

The development marks the third zero-day that Google has patched within a week after CVE-2024-4671 and CVE-2024-4761.

As is typically the case, no additional details about the attacks are available and have been withheld to prevent further exploitation. "Google is aware that an exploit for CVE-2024-4947 exists in the wild," the company said.

With CVE-2024-4947, a total of seven zero-days have been resolved by Google in Chrome since the start of the year -

CVE-2024-0519 - Out-of-bounds memory access in V8 CVE-2024-2886 - Use-after-free in WebCodecs (demonstrated at Pwn2Own 2024) CVE-2024-2887 - Type confusion in WebAssembly (demonstrated at Pwn2Own 2024) CVE-2024-3159 - Out-of-bounds memory access in V8 (demonstrated at Pwn2Own 2024) CVE-2024-4671 - Use-after-free in Visuals CVE-2024-4761 - Out-of-bounds write in V8

Users are recommended to upgrade to Chrome version 125.0.6422.60/.61 for Windows and macOS, and version 125.0.6422.60 for Linux to mitigate potential threats.

Users of Chromium-based browsers such as Microsoft Edge, Brave, Opera, and Vivaldi are also advised to apply the fixes as and when they become available.

Found this article interesting? Follow us on Twitter  and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.