Article by George Norman

On 12 May 2011

Google Chrome web browser has made a name for itself by being one of, if not the fastest browser on the market today. The browser also made a name for itself by offering a properly good level of security; what I mean by that is that for the past three years it survived the Pwn2Own contest, computer hacking contest held at the annual CanSecWest security conference, beginning in 2007 and sponsored by TippingPoint.

Chrome’s restrictive sandbox and other security measures meant that Pwn2own contestants could not pwn the browser. They could pwn other browsers, like Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Apple’s Safari or Mozilla’s Firefox, but not Google’s Chrome.


The news is that Chrome’s reputation of being unpwnable has been broken by Vupen Security, world leader in vulnerability research for defensive and offensive security. Vupen announced that it pwned Chrome, that it came up with a sophisticated exploit, the most sophisticated one Vupen has ever come up with, exploit that bypasses Chrome’s sandbox and other security features, including DEP (Data Execution Prevention) and ASLR (Address Space Layout Randomization).

Vupen explained that the exploit it came up with does not exploit a Windows kernel vulnerability; it exploits an undisclosed 0-day vulnerability discovered by Vupen, vulnerability that works on all 32-bit and 64-bit Windows systems. The exploit is silent, there’s no crash after executing the payload; it works on Chrome 11.X and 12.X.

“We are (un)happy to announce that we have officially Pwned Google Chrome and its sandbox,” said Vupen. “While Chrome has one of the most secure sandboxes and has always survived the Pwn2Own contest during the last three years, we have now uncovered a reliable way to execute arbitrary code on any default installation of Chrome despite its sandbox, ASLR and DEP.”

A video that presents the Vupen-uncovered exploit in action is available on YouTube here.
In the video a user of Chrome 11.0.696.65 on Windows 7 SP1 is tricked into visiting a malicious website that hosts Vupen’s exploit. The exploit code downloads a Calculator program from a remote location and launches it outside Chrome’s sandbox.



Tags: Google, Chrome, Security

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