Google Fixes 51 Vulnerabilities With Release of Chrome 41

Chrome 41 is available for download. The latest version of Google’s Web browser brings new apps and extension APIs, stability and performance improvements, and tens of security fixes.

A total of 51 security issues have been addressed in Chrome 41.0.2272.76, including 13 high-severity and 6 medium-severity vulnerabilities identified by external researchers.

Anonymous researchers have been awarded a total of $14,500 for identifying an out-of bounds write flaw in media (CVE-2015-1212), a use-after-free in v8 bindings (CVE-2015-1216), and a type confusion in v8 bindings (CVE-2015-1217).

The researcher who uses the online moniker Cloudfuzzer reported three out-of-bounds write vulnerabilities in skia filters (CVE-2015-1213, CVE-2015-1214, CVE-2015-1215), a use-after-free in DOM (CVE-2015-1218), and an out-of-bounds read in PDFium. Cloudfuzzer earned a total of $19,000 for his work.

The list of high-severity vulnerabilities also includes an integer overflow in WebGL (CVE-2015-1219) reported by Chen Zhang of the NSFOCUS Security Team, use-after-free flaws in web databases and service workers (CVE-2015-1221, CVE-2015-1222) reported by Collin Payne, a use-after-free in the gif decoder (CVE-2015-1220) found by Aki Helin of OUSPG, a use-after-free in DOM (CVE-2015-1223) identified by Maksymillian Motyl, and a type confusion issue in v8 (CVE-2015-1230) reported by Skylined.

Medium-severity issues include an out-of-bounds read in vpxdecoder, a validation issue in the debugger, an uninitialized value in the Blink rendering engine, an uninitialized value in rendering, and a cookie injection via proxies.

Several vulnerabilities have also been discovered by the Chrome Security Team.

So far, Google has paid out a total of more than $50,000 to those who contributed to making Chrome 41 more secure. The total bounty could be much higher since not all vulnerability reports have gone through the rewards panel.

Google announced last week that it has decided to turn the single-day Pwnium competition into a year-round program. Researchers who find a Pwnium-style bug chain in Chrome or Chrome OS and report it through the Chrome Vulnerability Reward Program (VRP) can get up to $50,000. The rewards pool is unlimited, or “infinity million,” as Google calls it.