In the realm of cybersecurity, CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) codes are catalog entries for publicly known security vulnerabilities and exposures, with the goal of assisting organizations in detecting and reacting to bugs. The particular vulnerability described in this post, CVE-2025-2476, is a critical security flaw that affects Google Chrome's Lens component.

Description

CVE-2025-2476 has been identified as a "use after free" bug in the Lens component of Google Chrome (prior to version 134..6998.117). This critical vulnerability can potentially allow a remote attacker to exploit heap corruption through a specially crafted HTML page. This problem arises when memory that has been freed is still being used, causing instability or system crashes, and potentially leading to an attacker taking control of the affected system.

The security severity of this issue in Chromium, the open-source browser project upon which Chrome is based, has been labeled as critical.

Details

In this case, the memory corruption occurs in the Lens component of Google Chrome, which makes it prone to this "use after free" bug. When an attacker creates an HTML page containing malicious code specifically crafted to exploit this vulnerability, visiting such a page with a vulnerable version of Chrome would potentially allow the attacker to execute arbitrary code or even gain control over the user's device.

Since the Lens API accesses a variety of features that include image processing, object parsing, and ARCore session handling, the vulnerability presents a higher risk of exploitation.

Here is an example of a code snippet that demonstrates how this vulnerability could be leveraged

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <title>CVE-2025-2476 Exploit Demo</title>
</head>
<body>
  <canvas id="exploitCanvas" width="500" height="500"></canvas>
  <script>
    const exploitCanvas = document.getElementById('exploitCanvas');
    const vulnerableFunc = () => {
      // code that frees memory here

      // code that uses that memory here, causing the use after free exploit
    }
    
    exploitCanvas.addEventListener('pointermove', vulnerableFunc);
  </script>
</body>
</html>

In response to this critical vulnerability, Google has released a new version of Chrome (134..6998.117) that addresses the bug.

Mitigation

To protect yourself and your organization from the potential security risks introduced by CVE-2025-2476, take the following steps:

Update your Google Chrome browser to the latest version (at least version 134..6998.117).


2. Enable automatic updates for Google Chrome in your organization to stay up to date with security fixes.

3. Make sure to avoid browsing suspicious or unknown websites, as they might contain malicious code designed to exploit the vulnerability.

4. Implement security awareness training for your employees to minimize the chance of them becoming victims of social engineering or phishing attacks, which may lead them to such attack pages.

Here are some original sources and references for more information on CVE-2025-2476

1. The Chromium Blog: Stable Channel Update for Desktop

2. National Vulnerability Database (NVD) Entry: CVE-2025-2476

3. Chromium Security Developer Documentation

Timeline

Published on: 03/19/2025 19:15:50 UTC
Last modified on: 03/24/2025 15:15:16 UTC