CVE-2011-3904 in Chrome
Summary
by MITRE
Use-after-free vulnerability in Google Chrome before 16.0.912.63 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service or possibly have unspecified other impact via vectors related to bidirectional text (aka bidi) handling.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 11/28/2021
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2011-3904 represents a critical use-after-free flaw in Google Chrome browsers prior to version 16.0.912.63, specifically within the bidirectional text handling mechanism. This security defect falls under the CWE-416 category of use-after-free vulnerabilities, where memory that has been freed is still accessed by the application, potentially leading to unpredictable behavior and system instability. The vulnerability manifests during the processing of bidirectional text elements, which are text sequences that contain both left-to-right and right-to-left character directions, commonly used in languages such as Arabic and Hebrew.
The technical exploitation of this vulnerability occurs when Chrome processes web content containing specially crafted bidirectional text sequences that trigger memory management errors during rendering operations. When the browser encounters malformed or maliciously constructed bidi text elements, the memory allocation and deallocation processes become corrupted, creating conditions where freed memory locations are accessed again. This memory corruption can result in application crashes, denial of service conditions, and potentially more severe consequences including arbitrary code execution. The vulnerability is particularly dangerous because bidirectional text handling is a fundamental component of web rendering that processes text from multiple languages and writing systems.
From an operational impact perspective, this vulnerability poses significant risks to users who browse the web with older Chrome versions, as attackers can remotely exploit this flaw through malicious websites or web content. The potential for unspecified other impacts suggests that beyond simple denial of service, attackers might be able to execute arbitrary code on affected systems, making this a critical security concern for organizations relying on older browser versions. The vulnerability affects the browser's rendering engine and memory management subsystem, potentially compromising the entire user session and system security.
Mitigation strategies for CVE-2011-3904 primarily involve immediate browser updates to version 16.0.912.63 or later, which contain patches addressing the memory management issues in bidirectional text handling. Organizations should implement comprehensive patch management procedures to ensure all Chrome installations are updated promptly. Additional protective measures include deploying web content filters, implementing browser security policies, and monitoring for suspicious web content that might exploit this vulnerability. Security teams should also consider implementing network-level protections and browser hardening measures to reduce the attack surface. The vulnerability demonstrates the importance of proper memory management in browser engines and highlights the need for continuous security testing of text processing components, as specified in the ATT&CK framework's techniques for memory corruption vulnerabilities.