Google has updated the stable channel of Chrome to version 44.0.2403.89. In addition to new features, which Google plans to detail these days, the latest release addressed a total of 43 security issues.
The list of vulnerabilities reported by external researchers includes 12 high severity bugs. Judging by the rewards paid out by Google, the most severe of these issues are a universal cross-site scripting (UXSS) flaw in Chrome for Android reported by Wang Tao of Baidu’s X-Team, and a UXSS in the Blink web browser engine reported by an anonymous researcher. Each of these experts has been awarded $7,500 for their findings.
Other high severity vulnerabilities fixed with the release of Chrome 44 are three heap buffer overflows in PDFium, use-after-free bugs in IndexedDB, Blink and PDFium, a heap buffer overflow in expat, a CSP bypass, and a memory corruption in Skia. A settings issue that allowed executable files to run immediately after download is also considered a high severity flaw.
These vulnerabilities have been assigned the following CVE identifiers: CVE-2015-1271, CVE-2015-1273, CVE-2015-1274, CVE-2015-1275, CVE-2015-1276, CVE-2015-1279, CVE-2015-1280, CVE-2015-1281, CVE-2015-1282, CVE-2015-1283, CVE-2015-1284, CVE-2015-1286.
The medium impact security bugs fixed in Chrome 44 are a same origin policy (SOP) bypass with CSS, an uninitialized memory read in ICU, a use-after-free related to unexpected GPU process termination, a use-after-free in accessibility, a URL spoofing bug involving PDF files, and an information leak in the XSS auditor.
Google has credited the following researchers for responsibly disclosing the flaws fixed in the latest version of Chrome: cloudfuzzer, makosoft, andrewm.bpi, Colin Payne, mlafon, Masato Kinugawa, Chamal de Silva, Atte Kettunen, sidhpurwala.huzaifa, filedescriptor, SkyLined, and gazheyes.
So far Google has paid out a total of nearly $40,000 to researchers who reported Chrome vulnerabilities. However, the amount could increase considerably because the rewards have not yet been determined for four high severity bugs.
Google announced last week that it has steadily improved the ability of the Safe Browsing system to detect deceptive software. The search giant says Chrome users should start noticing these detection improvements in the coming weeks.
Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.
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