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Actively exploited sandbox RCE in all Chromium versions

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Re: Actively exploited sandbox RCE in all Chromium versions

#511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest Zen browser (fork of FF), it feels closer to chrome.

What does it mean "closer to chrome"?

I should have been more specific. I meant the aesthetics. Zen mimics Arc Browser with vertical tabs and a hidden sidebar to maximize screen space.

Re: Actively exploited sandbox RCE in all Chromium versions

#512
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest Zen browser (fork of FF), it feels closer to chrome.

In a good way?

Yes, in my opinion. I know a couple of people who actually jumped from Chrome to Zen because of it. In their mind, Firefox is something from the past and rough around the edges. Zen gave new attraction to FF. I am all for any opportunity to disrupt the Chrome monopoly we currently have.

Re: Actively exploited sandbox RCE in all Chromium versions

#513
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest Zen browser (fork of FF), it feels closer to chrome.

I hear about Zen. Random q: It can’t trick Canva into letting you use the color picker, or otherwise enable it, can it - if someone happens to know? (What a dumb feature to be locked to the Googlesphere.)

I don’t know honestly.

Re: Actively exploited sandbox RCE in all Chromium versions

#515

Let's take a moment to talk about the monetary value of this vulnerability. According to the Chrome release page ( https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2026/09/stable-channel... ), Google paid a researcher $1000 for ethically reporting this. The CVE associated with it (CVE-2026-85046) is already being exploited in the wild. If we put our thinking caps on, how much do you think this vulnerability is actually worth? H…

This sends 2 clear signals:

- for developers: don't report, it's not worth it

- for users: Google does not care about security as it doesn't pay for reporting (enough).

Re: Actively exploited sandbox RCE in all Chromium versions

#516
post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JIT bugs like this are not easily solved simply by writing a browser in a typesafe language. Here's the commit that fixes this issue: https://chromium.googlesource.com/v8/v8/+/e0562d87ad9c17042b...

If including JIT in a system renders its developer incapable of guaranteeing memory safety, then perhaps that developer’s approach to JIT is not yet mature enough to ethically distribute to non-technical consumers who are not positioned to evaluate that their security is being traded off by the developer on their behalf. We’re past the era where security issues emanating from memory-unsafe code were tolerated due to…

You're just offering non-helpful ivory tower criticism without even understanding the problem space (which is actually one of the hardest open research problems in software engineering, cs.PL + formal methods).

But if I'm wrong, dare say, how would you write a production memory-safe JIT compiler today?

Re: Actively exploited sandbox RCE in all Chromium versions

#517

Just outta curiosity because I can't find it at a cursory look - what exactly would be the type (coersion?) that would allow v8 to execute arbitrary code? Is this like something in post data to nodejs that terminates early and is able to run exec or something, like unto a sql injection?

The Chromium issue is not public yet, so let's go with a very simple example. Let's say that you have a type confusion bug that (in terms of the interpreted language) allows you to use an Integer variable as an Array. That sounds nonsensical when just considering the high-level language, but your computer is going to need something to work with when running a script. For an Integer variable it will for example store…

I appreciate the thorough explanation... you seem to understand the domain... but I still don't get how this would work in practice. My experience with C/C++ is somewhat limited but I imagine V8 does something like reserve a whole bunch of addresses and then manage them itself, with some internal list where script arrays/objects correspond to blocks. Or maybe it delegates some of that to C++ vectors that can scale up. But what scripted integer or array could you pass it that would access anything already freed or outside the bounds of the addresses that array was mapped to? The only thing I can think is some kind of asynchronous wipe that would allow the engine to write other data to that block, and using a race condition to access it after it was free. But that doesn't sound quite like a type confusion.

What's an actual snippet of pseudo-JS that could make the engine overrun its memory and start reading out of arbitrary addresses, even within the sandbox? Wouldn't that have been accounted for in the most basic design?

Re: Actively exploited sandbox RCE in all Chromium versions

#518
post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just saying it's more evidence that Google should be broken up.

How would you break up Google that would make browsers more secure?

I don't see how we could have more vulnerability, on a massive scale, than to have two companies which pre-install both the OS and the browser, on their own hardware in the case of Apple, for 95% of the planet.

Microsoft was sued by the USDOJ in 1998 precisely for this, that it was leveraging the pre-installation of Windows to force Internet Explorer to be the default browser for PC consumers. That that was bad for both security and for the web seems pretty obvious in retrospect, when you think about the trajectory of IE.

Apple's insistent blocking of non-webkit web engines, including V8, on its own hardware/iOS is an even more egregious and dangerous phenomenon.

Browser security and browsers themselves would be vastly improved if they weren't a monopoly of the two mobile OS makers.

Re: Actively exploited sandbox RCE in all Chromium versions

#519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is the answer to an Internet that largely blocks ads and uses backdoors to circumvent pay walls. A single massive pillar with enough surface area to carry all the dead weight. If people want a better internet, they can start fostering one, rather than endlessly complain that someone else should be fostering it for them. There will probably be upwards of 1000 people who read this comment that have used Google s…

Google is routinely buying and destroying competitors. They lower prices to kill competition en-masse. They promote their own products in search and elsewhere over paid ads. Search Engine have chicken and egg problem, you can only have a good search if enough people use it to tune the ranking and see enough search spam cases. “Just compete with a monopoly on their own field with one hand tied behind”

Every Google competitor has the problem that 40% of users won't load ads and 99% won't pay a subscription.

They don't need to do anything adversarial, the greed driven mindset of the internet (ads suck, everything should be free) staves off any real competition.

Re: Actively exploited sandbox RCE in all Chromium versions

#520
post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If including JIT in a system renders its developer incapable of guaranteeing memory safety, then perhaps that developer’s approach to JIT is not yet mature enough to ethically distribute to non-technical consumers who are not positioned to evaluate that their security is being traded off by the developer on their behalf. We’re past the era where security issues emanating from memory-unsafe code were tolerated due to…

You're just offering non-helpful ivory tower criticism without even understanding the problem space (which is actually one of the hardest open research problems in software engineering, cs.PL + formal methods). But if I'm wrong, dare say, how would you write a production memory-safe JIT compiler today ?

If I couldn't guarantee memory safety, I wouldn't. We're talking about an optional feature for JavaScript engines.

Security is where the rubber hits the road. It's whether customers' identities get stolen. It's whether leaders of undemocratic countries can monitor communications, locations, and social networks of people whom they oppress.

Calling this an "ivory tower" criticism is, ironically, a lack of acknowledgement of reality and that our actions have consequences to others.

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