A severe vulnerability, identified as CVE-2025-2783, has been discovered in Google Chrome, specifically targeting the Mojo inter-process communication (IPC) component on Windows systems.
This high-impact flaw, with a CVSS score of 8.8, stems from improper handle validation and management within Mojo, enabling remote attackers to craft malicious payloads that, when triggered through user interaction like clicking a phishing link or visiting a malicious website, allow them to escape Chrome’s tightly controlled sandbox environment.
Discovered during a targeted attack campaign dubbed “Operation ForumTroll,” which compromised systems in Russia’s media, education, and government sectors, this zero-day exploit chain underscores the critical risks posed by sandbox escape vulnerabilities.
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The flaw facilitates arbitrary command execution outside the sandbox, granting attackers the ability to achieve persistence, move laterally across networks, and deploy malicious payloads on the host machine with potentially devastating consequences.
Rapid Response and Detailed Patch Analysis
Reported to Google by Kaspersky researchers Boris Larin and Igor Kuznetsov on March 25, 2025, CVE-2025-2783 was addressed with remarkable speed, with a patch rolled out within just five days in Chrome version 134.0.6998.177.
Technical analysis of the patch, conducted through reverse engineering tools like Ghidra and IDA Free, alongside BinDiff comparisons between the vulnerable (v134.0.6998.142) and patched versions, reveals significant fortifications.
Key improvements include stringent input validation to reject NULL or malformed Mojo handles, new conditional checks to gate escape functionality behind a safe list of codes, and early return mechanisms in IPC handlers to abort processing of unexpected message types.
Additionally, sanitization of incoming message content and enhanced crash prevention logging have been integrated to thwart crafted payloads and monitor handler misuse.
Chromium Git commits further highlight security-focused updates, such as rejecting suspicious Mojo transfers and applying rigorous filters to renderer processes, effectively neutralizing the exploit paths exploited in the wild.
The implications of CVE-2025-2783 are profound, as it exposes even sandboxed environments to full system compromise, data theft, and malware deployment with relatively low attack complexity, despite requiring user interaction.
Google has automatically deployed fixes via Chrome Updater, but users and organizations must remain vigilant.
Ensuring auto-updates are enabled, blocking suspicious domains at the firewall or DNS level, and educating users on phishing risks are critical defensive measures.
On the detection front, monitoring for anomalous Chrome renderer behavior, such as unauthorized child process spawning, and leveraging memory-based Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solutions can help identify exploitation attempts.
As this vulnerability was actively exploited in targeted attacks, it serves as a stark reminder of the evolving sophistication of threat actors and the importance of robust security practices.
CVE-2025-2783 not only highlights the fragility of IPC mechanisms when improperly validated but also reinforces the need for continuous vigilance and proactive patching to safeguard against such high-severity threats in widely used software like Chrome.
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