Chrome: Use-after-free in Media Stream component (CVE-2025-8292) #shorts
Summary
On July 30, 2025, Google released a security update to address CVE-2025-8292, a high-severity use-after-free vulnerability in the Media Stream component of Chrome that could allow remote attackers to cause heap corruption via a crafted HTML page.
Product details
Affected products include Google Chrome prior to version 138.0.7204.183 on all supported platforms, as well as downstream builds in Linux distributions such as openSUSE and Fedora 42’s Chromium packages.
Vulnerability type summary
This issue is classified as a use-after-free vulnerability in the Media Stream API. A remote attacker could exploit improper memory handling to use freed objects, leading to heap corruption and potential code execution.
Details of the vulnerability
CVE-2025-8292 resides in Chrome’s Media Stream component. When processing a specially crafted HTML page that leverages Media Stream APIs, Chrome may access memory that has already been released, resulting in heap corruption. The Chromium security team rated this flaw as High severity due to the potential for remote compromise without user interaction, aside from visiting a malicious page.
Conclusion
Users and administrators should immediately update Google Chrome to version 138.0.7204.183 or later. Linux distributions such as openSUSE and Fedora have also issued patched Chromium packages; apply those updates promptly. Staying current with browser security updates is critical to defend against remote code execution threats.
Watch the full video on YouTube: CVE-2025-8292
Remediation and exploitation details
This chain involves the following actors
- Remote attacker: Prepares and delivers malicious web content to exploit the vulnerability
- End user: Loads the malicious page in Google Chrome and unknowingly triggers the exploit
This following systems are involved
- Google Chrome web browser (Renders web pages and hosts the media stream component): Executes the attacker’s crafted HTML and JavaScript
- Media Stream component (Provides audio and video capture functionality to web applications): Manages allocation and deallocation of media track objects
Attack entry point
- Malicious HTML page: Contains JavaScript that invokes media capture APIs in a specific sequence to trigger a use-after-free
Remediation actions
Exploitation actions
Call getUserMedia to allocate internal media track objects
- <script>navigator.mediaDevices.getUserMedia({ audio: true, video: true });</script>
Trigger a race condition where the track object is freed before cleanup completes
- stream.getTracks()[0].stop();
Allocate many large buffers filled with attacker-controlled bytes to occupy the freed slot
- var spray = []; for (var i=0; i<1000; i++) spray.push(new ArrayBuffer(0x1000).fill(0x41));
Force the component to reallocate a media track object in the same memory region now controlled by attacker data
- navigator.mediaDevices.getUserMedia({ audio: true });
Leverage the corrupted object to overwrite a callback pointer and redirect execution to shellcode
- Overwrite vtable entry to point at injected code in sprayed buffer
Related Content
NOTE: The following related content has not been vetted and may be unsafe.
- https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2025/07/stable-channel-update-for-desktop_29.html
- https://issues.chromium.org/issues/426054987
- [2025-08-05] openSUSE releases an update to fix a Chromium vulnerability (CVE-2025-8292) affecting media stream.
- [2025-08-01] Google issues Chrome security update to address a severe use-after-free vulnerability in the Media Stream component.
- [2025-08-01] openSUSE releases an important update for Chromium to address a media stream vulnerability.
- [2025-08-03] Fedora 42 updates Chromium to fix CVE-2025-8292, a use-after-free vulnerability in Media Stream.