GitHub has released technical information on six vulnerabilities identified by one of its security researchers in the WebAudio component of Chrome.
The vulnerabilities were reported to Google by Man Yue Mo of the GitHub Security Lab in February and March. The researcher started looking for Chrome vulnerabilities while he was working for Semmle, which GitHub acquired last year for its code analysis platform. While at Semmle, the expert identified several Chrome sandbox escape vulnerabilities for which Google paid out tens of thousands of dollars.
The latest security holes discovered by the researcher — all described as high-severity use-after-free issues — have been patched by Google in Chrome 80. However, the tech giant has yet to decide how much it will pay out for them.
The vulnerabilities are tracked as CVE-2020-6450, CVE-2020-6451, CVE-2020-6427, CVE-2020-6428, CVE-2020-6429 and CVE-2020-6449. They all affect the WebAudio component in Chrome, which is used for implementing the Web Audio API. This API is designed for controlling audio on the web and it allows developers to choose audio sources, add effects, and create visualizations.
GitHub told SecurityWeek that while the vulnerabilities have been classified as high severity, they are “sandboxed in the renderer” and in order to exploit them for arbitrary code execution in the context of Chrome they would need to be chained with another sandbox escape flaw either in Chrome or the operating system.
If an attacker finds such a sandbox escape vulnerability, they could launch a remote attack directly from the web, GitHub said.
The GitHub Security Lab has released individual technical advisories for each of the Chrome vulnerabilities. The advisory for CVE-2020-6450 reveals that this issue is a result of an incomplete fix for two of the other vulnerabilities identified by Man Yue Mo
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