Technical impact
This vulnerability is a use‑after‑free flaw in the GFX module of Google Chrome for macOS that existed before version 148.0.7778.216. When a renderer process is already compromised, an attacker can supply a specially crafted HTML page to trigger the freed memory usage, potentially allowing the attacker to escape the Chrome sandbox and execute code with higher privileges. The weakness is categorized as CWE‑416, indicating that the flaw involves dereferencing memory after its deallocation.
Affected Systems
Google Chrome on macOS users running any version prior to 148.0.7778.216 are affected. The vulnerability is present in any channel release before that version and affects all macOS platforms that run the vulnerable build.
Risk and Exploitability
An EPSS score of < 1% indicates a low likelihood of exploitation, but the CVSS score of 8.3 still signals severe risk, and the vulnerability is not listed in CISA’s KEV catalog. The likely attack path requires an attacker to first compromise the renderer process and then load a malicious HTML document that triggers the use‑after‑free. Once the exploit succeeds, the sandbox can be bypassed, giving the attacker elevated privileges. The vulnerability is therefore considered high risk for any system that can be compromised by malicious web content.
Debian DSA