The eighth zero-day vulnerability used in attacks this year has been fixed by Google in an emergency security upgrade for the desktop version of the Chrome web browser.
This high-severity zero-day vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2022-4135, a Heap buffer overflow in GPU. The security flaw was identified by Clement Lecigne of Google’s Threat Analysis Group on November 22, 2022.
A heap overflow is a form of buffer overflow; it happens when a chunk of memory is allocated to the heap and data is written to this memory without any bound checking being done on the data.
Hence, threat actors may manipulate the execution path of an application by overwriting its memory using a heap buffer overflow, leading to arbitrary code execution or unrestricted information access.
Google’s Emergency Update
According to Google’s update notice, the Stable channel has been updated to 107.0.5304.121 for Mac and Linux and 107.0.5304.121/.122 for Windows, which will roll out over the coming days/weeks.
“Access to bug details and links may be kept restricted until a majority of users are updated with a fix. We will also retain restrictions if the bug exists in a third-party library that other projects similarly depend on, but haven’t yet fixed”, Google
To update Chrome, head to Settings → About Chrome → Wait for the download of the latest version to finish → Restart the program.
“Google is aware that an exploit for CVE-2022-4135 exists in the wild”, Google said in a release note.
Zero-day Vulnerability Fixed In 2022
Google has released Chrome 107.0.5304.121/122 which fixes the eighth actively exploited zero-day vulnerability. The previous seven zero-day fixes include:
- CVE-2022-4135
- CVE-2022-3723
- CVE-2022-3075
- CVE-2022-2856
- CVE-2022-2294
- CVE-2022-1364
- CVE-2022-1096
- CVE-2022-0609
In order to acquire unrestricted access to sensitive data, hackers frequently use these flaws in highly targeted attacks.
Thus, Google urged users to update their Chrome web browser right away to guard against exploitation.
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