[HN Gopher] Chrome 0day is being exploited now for CVE-2022-1096...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Chrome 0day is being exploited now for CVE-2022-1096; update
       immediately
        
       Author : gargarplex
       Score  : 139 points
       Date   : 2022-03-26 17:45 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.forbes.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.forbes.com)
        
       | badrabbit wrote:
       | Is there a public exploit for this? Working on detecting browser
       | exploitation myself.
        
         | throwaway684936 wrote:
         | I believe more details are usually published after most people
         | are given a chance to update.
        
         | ineedasername wrote:
         | If you mean in-the-wild, then yes:
         | https://securityboulevard.com/2022/03/google-chrome-cve-2022...
        
       | buro9 wrote:
       | Type confusion in V8... May well impact Cloudflare workers too.
        
         | dknecht wrote:
         | We have already tested and global rollout started earlier
         | today.
        
       | amelius wrote:
       | Is Electron at risk too?
        
         | scambier wrote:
         | If your Electron app executes third party, remote code. But if
         | it does, you should definitely not use it.
        
           | gruez wrote:
           | >If your Electron app executes third party, remote code.
           | 
           | There's a high chance that it does because of embedded
           | content/ads/iframes/in-app browsers.
        
       | ainar-g wrote:
       | Looks like these are the two commits, based on the issue number:
       | 
       | https://github.com/v8/v8/commit/0981e91a4f8692af337e2588562a...
       | 
       | https://github.com/v8/v8/commit/a2cae2180a7a6d64ccdede44d730...
       | 
       | Although there could be others.
        
       | nathants wrote:
       | securing a machine that is updated regularly and runs untrusted
       | code is not realistic, monitoring network exfil is.
       | 
       | an exploit that cannot communicate is likely benign and easy to
       | detect in the attempt.
       | 
       | monitor all outbound network connections with a gui prompt that
       | defaults to deny. whitelist trusted domains/ip for a better
       | experience and a bit less security.
       | 
       | macos has littlesnitch[1], linux has opensnitch[2], or roll your
       | own on libnetfilterqueue[3].
       | 
       | bonus points if the filtering happens upstream at a router or
       | wireguard host so a compromised machine cannot easily disable
       | filtering.
       | 
       | bonus points if the filtering is at executable level granularity
       | instead of system level.
       | 
       | 1. https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html 2.
       | https://github.com/evilsocket/opensnitch 3.
       | https://github.com/nathants/tinysnitch
        
       | eezurr wrote:
       | Anyone know if this affects Vivaldi? I assume it does since it's
       | chromium based, but there isn't an update available.
        
       | _Nat_ wrote:
       | > Not much is known, at least publicly, at this stage about
       | CVE-2022-1096 other than it is a "Type Confusion in V8." This
       | refers to the JavaScript engine employed by Chrome.
       | 
       | Is there a safer JavaScript engine folks can use without having
       | to worry about this sorta thing? Even if it's slower, less
       | compatible, more resource-intensive, etc.?
       | 
       | I feel like, in most cases, I could make due with JavaScript
       | being 10x or even 100x slower, taking up 10x the RAM, lacking
       | some uncommon features, and so forth -- if it meant being able to
       | enable it without needing to worry about new zero-days.
        
         | paxys wrote:
         | You are making the assumption that an engine with fewer
         | optimizations that runs slower will be safer by default, but I
         | fail to see the connection between the two.
        
         | Ourgon wrote:
         | > I feel like, in most cases, I could make due with JavaScript
         | being 10x or even 100x slower, taking up 10x the RAM, lacking
         | some uncommon features, and so forth -- if it meant being able
         | to enable it without needing to worry about new zero-days.
         | 
         | Not on the "modern web" you wouldn't, even the current speedy
         | versions of V8 and _${whatever}monkey_ now used by Firefox the
         | thing often is brought to a crawl by the deluge of Javascript.
         | Imagine your current browser, only 100 times slower and 10
         | times more memory-hungry.
         | 
         | Nope, the solution lies in getting rid of most of the
         | Javascript on most pages. uBlock and uMatrix can help a bit but
         | the real solution lies with web developers. If and when that
         | goal is achieved it would be possible to browse the web using a
         | slow-but-'safe' browser. Some pages (e.g. SPAs) really depend
         | on all that Javascript and as such won't be useable withour
         | 'modern' JS engines but there is no reason for e.g. your bank
         | or payment processor's pages to depend on near-native speed
         | Javascript engines.
        
           | asddubs wrote:
           | whenever someone says "the solution is" and then says
           | something that depends on a bunch of individual actors acting
           | of their own accord rather than something systemic, it's hard
           | to take them seriously. in a hypothetical dream world that
           | might be a solution.
        
           | hedora wrote:
           | Try running the modern web without a supported GPU (eg
           | through VNC on a VM with a vesa video card).
           | 
           | Even trivial sites will knock over the fastest Xeon
           | available. I can't imagine how much worse it would be if you
           | also disabled the JS JIT.
        
           | bastawhiz wrote:
           | > it would be possible to browse the web using a slow-
           | but-'safe' browser. Some pages (e.g. SPAs) really depend on
           | all that Javascript and as such won't be useable withour
           | 'modern' JS engines but there is no reason for e.g. your bank
           | or payment processor's pages to depend on near-native speed
           | Javascript engines.
           | 
           | I don't plan on my bank trying to 0day my browser. If
           | anything, I trust them not to do anything malicious _more_
           | than the sites that actually need to go fast.
        
             | tedunangst wrote:
             | Even bank pages contain a lot of analytics, and any of
             | those sites could be used against you.
        
             | Ourgon wrote:
             | You don't seem to understand what I wrote so I'll explain
             | it:
             | 
             | - imagine a slow-but-secure browser, 10 to 100 times as
             | slow and using 10 times as much memory as stated by the
             | parent poster
             | 
             | - imagine your bank and payment processor using a minimal
             | amount of Javascript on their sites to make it possible to
             | use that secure-but-slow browser without incurring too big
             | a performance penalty
             | 
             | Do you now see what I mean? It is not that your financial
             | institutions would zero-day you, it is that you'd use the
             | secure-but-slow browser (or browser mode) to access those
             | sites. Secure, because you're dealing with financial data.
             | Slow because that is what the parent poster stated as the
             | price he'd be willing to pay for a secure browser.
             | 
             | You can you your insecure-but-speedy browser to watch cat
             | videos where the H4CkZ0Rz can try to zero-day you to their
             | hearts content because that browser does not have access to
             | sensitive data. You could try to watch those cat videos
             | with the secure-but-slow browser but that'd transport you
             | back to the late 90's with single-digit frame rates (cat
             | slide shows?).
        
               | tedunangst wrote:
               | The dangerous assumption here is that whatever sandbox
               | you put the bad browser in actually contains it.
        
         | azornathogron wrote:
         | There are certainly other javascript implementations. For
         | example, here's one I stumbled upon recently that's written in
         | plain Go: https://github.com/dop251/goja
         | 
         | Of course, it won't help you since it's not built into a web
         | browser.
        
         | azornathogron wrote:
         | If you're worried about browser vulnerabilities in the
         | javascript engine, have you considered disabling javascript by
         | default and enabling it per-site on just the sites that you
         | trust?
        
           | _Nat_ wrote:
           | Yup, that's the current strategy.
           | 
           | However, I'd prefer to have a secure JavaScript-engine that
           | could be kept on by default, then enable a fast JavaScript-
           | engine on a per-site basis.
           | 
           | For example, I have an exception on here for HackerNews to
           | use JavaScript. But the JavaScript HackerNews uses is
           | trivial; a naive JavaScript engine that's 1000x slower and
           | uses 100x the RAM probably wouldn't even make an observable
           | difference, would it? Except if it's secure, then I could've
           | just had JavaScript on by default (without needing to add an
           | exception), and then I wouldn't have to worry about stuff
           | like if HackerNews gets compromised one day.
           | 
           | A lot of sites seem to do really little things with
           | JavaScript, but break if it's disabled -- some blog sites
           | won't even load posts without JavaScript enabled. It'd be
           | nice to just have a secure browser to view such things with.
        
         | gruez wrote:
         | >Is there a safer JavaScript engine folks can use without
         | having to worry about this sorta thing? Even if it's slower,
         | less compatible, more resource-intensive, etc.?
         | 
         | You can disable JIT in firefox[1], which makes it fall back to
         | an interpreter. That should theoretically make it safer as
         | there are less optimizations going on and less generated code
         | being directly executed by the CPU.
         | 
         | [1]
         | https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/blob/b4225baaf2f8d15f856...
        
           | zamadatix wrote:
           | You can disable jit in Chromium browsers via flag as well.
           | Chromium Edge has this exposed in the UI as "Super Duper
           | Secure Mode".
           | 
           | I'm not sure if there is a way to do this on Safari.
        
         | flotzam wrote:
         | Maybe JIT-less V8: https://v8.dev/blog/jitless
        
         | kerng wrote:
         | Microsoft has added some mitigtions to Edge a few months ago as
         | defense in depth - wondering now if this is actually
         | exploitable on Edge or if their mitigations prevent it? Any
         | Microsoft/Edge security people on here?
         | 
         | Update: found the original blog from Microsoft, they call it
         | Super Duper Secure Mode:
         | https://microsoftedge.github.io/edgevr/posts/Super-Duper-Sec...
        
         | svenfaw wrote:
         | For Windows, IE11/Trident. This may sound ridiculous, but if
         | you think about it, it's still maintained security-wise (and
         | will be forever, as per MS), and since its codebase has been
         | frozen a few years ago, its attack surface can only shrink with
         | time.
         | 
         | So if you're OK with the limited compatibility, it might be
         | worth considering.
        
           | asddubs wrote:
           | i think the problem with IE11 is going to be the rendering
           | moreso than the javascript engine. it doesn't support css
           | variables and only a custom version of the grid syntax, so
           | sites are only going to get more broken
        
           | johndfsgdgdfg wrote:
           | I just love MS. A company so focused on security and caring
           | about its customers. I always encourage people to use Edge.
           | We need to stop spyware companies like Google.
        
             | lanstin wrote:
             | My what a difference twenty years makes. the relative food
             | and evil of MS and Google have totally swapped. Shows the
             | cost of Google's failure to find other profitable
             | businesses than ads. It is sad for the software revolution,
             | with so much talent in their employees, they had so much
             | potential to improve the world.
        
             | sofixa wrote:
             | Microsoft is not focused on security. The amount of
             | _trivially exploitable_ extremely serious security bugs in
             | Azure scream  "nobody even pretends to think about security
             | here".
        
           | gruez wrote:
           | >it's still maintained security-wise (and will be forever, as
           | per MS),
           | 
           | Source? According to microsoft:
           | 
           | >Please note that the Internet Explorer (IE) 11 desktop
           | application will end support for certain operating systems
           | starting June 15, 2022
           | 
           | >Customers are encouraged to move to Microsoft Edge with IE
           | mode. IE mode enables backward compatibility and will be
           | supported through at least 2029. Additionally, Microsoft will
           | provide notice one year prior to retiring IE mode.
           | 
           | Your best bet right now for IE 11 is an installation of
           | windows server 2022, which contains IE 11 and will be
           | supported till Oct 14, 2031. Still, it's unknown whether IE
           | 11 would be supported by then.
        
             | zamadatix wrote:
             | A lot of confusion between various comments so far so this
             | is my attempt to re-baseline:
             | 
             | - Chakra is the JavaScript engine in I.E. 11 (and later
             | forked for the old MS Edge), Trident (MSHTML) was the
             | browser engine (forked into EdgeHTML for the old MS Edge).
             | 
             | - The I.E. 11 desktop application is just that, the desktop
             | application. It is not all of I.E. 11 or it's engines, the
             | rest of which are still in Windows 11 even.
             | 
             | - I.E. mode is the first party way to access the remaining
             | portions of I.E. 11 via the current Chromium Edge, this is
             | what allowed them to sunset the I.E. desktop application.
             | 
             | All that said I don't particularly buy this as being
             | particularly more secure. Sure, it's only getting security
             | fixes but that doesn't inherently mean it is more secure or
             | getting more security fixes than modern solutions. It could
             | just be becoming an outdated security architecture that is
             | only patched often enough to keep the minute userbase happy
             | enough.
        
         | meibo wrote:
         | What you're asking for will probably put you more at risk than
         | V8 does:
         | 
         | 1) JavaScript engines with any kind of usable performance are
         | inherently complex
         | 
         | 2) V8 is hardened, battle-tested and fuzzed/verified by the
         | best engineers at Google and indepentently by third party
         | researchers, since inception - the engine you will be using
         | probably won't be
         | 
         | All of this is really a side-effect of Chrome's popularity and
         | Google's resources, even the CVE itself. You would be relying
         | on security by obscurity(in which obscurity = no big userbase =
         | not a high value target). Have a look at payouts for RCE-
         | capable V8 bugs.
        
           | _Nat_ wrote:
           | I'd prefer a [provably
           | secure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provable_security )
           | JavaScript-engine as a default. Or, if provable-security
           | would be a bit much for a near-term project, something more
           | heavily based in a simple engine-design, without trying to
           | optimize stuff and perhaps including seemingly-redundant run-
           | time checks.
           | 
           | Ya know, stuff like type-checking arguments, using stronger
           | restrictions on async-calls to avoid potential race-
           | conditions, more parameter-validation, relying on automatic-
           | memory-management to avoid bugs, always bound-checking on
           | array-accesses, always overflow-checking math, and so forth.
           | In general, code that's designed to be simple and plainly
           | correct, resisting the temptation to optimize.
           | 
           | Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that a lot of security-folks
           | do good work trying to help identify-and-patch
           | vulnerabilities in V8/etc.. And I appreciate that that
           | enables a balance between performance and security that might
           | be right for some applications. However, there're a lot of
           | cases where I'd prefer a heavier focus on security.
        
           | creata wrote:
           | > JavaScript engines with any kind of usable performance are
           | inherently complex
           | 
           | Depends on what you're using it for, surely? If you're just
           | watching videos or scrolling through the news (where the
           | JavaScript takes a back seat) then wouldn't _any_
           | implementation be fast enough?
        
       | johndfsgdgdfg wrote:
        
         | aceBacker wrote:
         | Heh, my corp locks down the edge updates and bundles them with
         | the OS updates. Edge is going to be vulnerable to this one for
         | months maybe a year longer that chrome.
        
         | ptk wrote:
         | I don't know if you're joking or not, and I say this as someone
         | who uses Edge as their primary browser, but Edge does not
         | improve the situation you describe. Edge is just a flavor of
         | chromium at this point and absolutely gives Chrome a run for
         | its money in the tracking and telemetry department.
        
         | hungryforcodes wrote:
         | Windows 10 is definitely spyware. So migrating to Edge is
         | hardly a solution. Chromium on the other hand...
        
       | ruuda wrote:
       | Type confusion in V8 ... Fortunately I turned off javascript by
       | default since Meltdown/Spectre.
        
         | dijit wrote:
         | I did the same. But the web is basically unusable for me now
         | and devs seem unsympathetic.
        
       | baq wrote:
       | Just what the doctor ordered in the middle of a war which is also
       | waged in the information space. Hopefully the fact that it's in
       | v8 will take the exploit a bit longer than usual to proliferate.
        
         | draw_down wrote:
        
       | gruez wrote:
       | Is there a site/service/mailing list that provides notifications
       | for critical/RCE/in-the-wild exploit patches? Keeping every piece
       | of software you run up-to-date takes a lot of work, and something
       | like that would help with knowing what to prioritize.
        
         | cors-fls wrote:
         | Yes ! Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERT)[1] exist in most
         | countries and publish security advisories as newsletters or
         | RSS. e.g. CERT-EU security advisories [2]
         | 
         | But there are so many softwares and exploits that the signal to
         | noise ratio is low if you are not in charge of a big IT infra.
         | 
         | [1]
         | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_emergency_response_...
         | 
         | [2]
         | https://cert.europa.eu/cert/newsletter/en/latest_SecurityBul...
        
           | gruez wrote:
           | >[2] https://cert.europa.eu/cert/newsletter/en/latest_Securit
           | yBul...
           | 
           | I took a look and my first impressions are not good.
           | 
           | 1. like you mentioned, the signal to noise ratio is pretty
           | bad. eg. "OpenSSL/LibreSSL Vulnerability (CERT-EU Security
           | Advisory 2022-017)" which is a DoS exploit that consumers
           | would likely not care about. There's also no vendor/product
           | filter, so I get notifications about "H2 Database Console"
           | that I don't care about.
           | 
           | 2. It's slow/out of date. eg. "Multiple Vulnerabilities in
           | VMware (CERT-EU Security Advisory 2022-013)" was published on
           | February 17, 2022, but the patch was published January 15th,
           | a month earlier.
        
             | CiPHPerCoder wrote:
             | Yes, it's a firehose. I'm sure you can find a security
             | vendor willing to offer a curated list somewhere.
        
         | newman555 wrote:
         | funny enough, was asking my self the same question yesterday
         | after 5-minute googling didn't get me anywhere. I see a
         | recommendation mentioned below, but as I also saw, hard to find
         | something where you can control signal to noise ratio
        
       | mdb31 wrote:
       | Chromium-based versions of Microsoft Edge are also vulnerable:
       | updating to 99.0.1150.55 fixes this CVE
        
       | paulpauper wrote:
       | this just goes to show that updates are always 2 or so steps
       | behind. It's a near certainty that governments, top criminal
       | organizations have a trove of exploits for all major programs,
       | and new ones created after old ones get patched.
        
       | suigetsusake wrote:
       | It looks like this impacts all chromium-based browsers [0] which
       | might not be obvious (was not for me anyway)
       | 
       | [0] https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-
       | guide/vulnerability/CVE-20...
        
       | octoberfranklin wrote:
       | When the web "standards" are so insanely complicated that even
       | Google can't implement them securely, it's time to admit that we
       | have a problem.
       | 
       | When there is only one other complete implementation of these
       | "standards" (with miniscule market share), it's time to panic.
        
         | kerng wrote:
         | Dont think this has todo with web standards, its probably JIT
         | related. Google should just turn that off, majority of 0 days
         | seem to be because of that.
        
         | dclusin wrote:
         | It feels to me like the entire os security model is broken and
         | leaving security up to applications even well resourced ones
         | like chrome is a fools errand.
         | 
         | Is there anyway we could benefit from starting again and
         | building a secure os from first principles? Isn't this one of
         | Fuscias goals?
        
           | Sunspark wrote:
           | You have to start further back than you realize. Almost all
           | computers nowadays ship with a second dedicated CPU and OS
           | that you can't access or shut off. They are network self-
           | aware and it is a backdoor. The most well known one is called
           | the Intel Management Engine.
           | 
           | There is no point having better software if you can't even
           | secure the hardware. Yes, the risk is minimal because even if
           | the key to the ME leaks, it will never be given away or sold
           | because it's too valuable. It is still a sense of disquiet
           | for me that it is there in the first place. It doesn't add to
           | the performance or security of your existing setup. It is
           | there to make things easier for others.
        
             | dclusin wrote:
             | The server motherboard I just bought has this as well.
             | Thankfully access to it is at least isolated to a separate
             | network port. I'm debating supergluing it closed or maybe
             | physically disconnect the port somehow.
        
               | jacquesm wrote:
               | You may want to review that _very_ carefully, typically
               | if that separate network port doesn 't have a live
               | network on it that issues DHCP addresses the
               | functionality will fall back to the port that _is_
               | attached.
        
               | dclusin wrote:
               | Oh fun. Thank you for the tip! Any sugestions on how to
               | go about this? I'm a relative newb in these matters.
               | Switching from MacOS to linux daily driver
        
               | jacquesm wrote:
               | Keep an eye on ports 16992-16995, 5900, 623, 664, and
               | realize that packets destined for those ports may never
               | become visible to the OS so you'll have to catch them in
               | transit to the board. Another place to look at is what
               | DHCP leases are issued by your DHCP server, conceivably
               | the management engine could request an address for
               | itself.
        
         | bawolff wrote:
         | There is no indication yet that this is due to complex web
         | standards. It could be, but we literally dont know what the bug
         | is yet.
        
           | hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
           | But we do know that it is Javascript-related, so please
           | correct me if I'm wrong but disabling JS for all websites
           | except the ones you really, really trust and need should
           | offer long-term general protection against such 0-days in
           | most cases.
        
             | paxys wrote:
             | There are lots of 0day exploits outside of the JavaScript
             | engine. Going down this path, it would be safest to not use
             | the web at all, or really just not own a computer.
        
               | hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
               | No, I think it's reductio ad absurdum; what I mean is
               | reasonable means of reducing risks for people who don't
               | use that much web apps and consume mostly text such as
               | news etc.
        
       | fn-mote wrote:
       | I use snap for some applications in spite of the trouble it has
       | caused me. I was super-happy to find out that it had upgraded me
       | to a not-vulnerable verson of chromium before I even knew to
       | look.
       | 
       | For all of the (deserved) hate snap gets, there are some shining
       | up sides.
        
         | the_common_man wrote:
         | I use apt and it didn't update to this vulnerable version in
         | the first place, so there's that
        
       | TT-392 wrote:
       | Anyone know if qutebrowser is affected?
        
         | dijit wrote:
         | Yes
        
         | creata wrote:
         | Why wouldn't it be? It uses Chromium (via QtWebEngine) by
         | default.
        
       | tommiegannert wrote:
       | Looks like 99.0.4844.84 is the release we want.
       | 
       | https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2022/03/stable-channel...
        
         | metadat wrote:
         | It's definitely not yet out for Android.
         | 
         | On my device the version is stuck at: 99.0.4844.73
        
       | janci wrote:
       | Is Chrome for android affected? And V8 in nodejs?
        
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       (page generated 2022-03-26 23:01 UTC)