CVE-2020-6483 in Chrome
Summary
by MITRE
Insufficient policy enforcement in payments in Google Chrome prior to 83.0.4103.61 allowed a remote attacker to bypass navigation restrictions via a crafted HTML page.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 05/05/2025
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2020-6483 represents a critical flaw in Google Chrome's payment processing system that emerged from insufficient policy enforcement mechanisms. This weakness specifically affected Chrome versions prior to 83.0.4103.61 and created a pathway for remote attackers to circumvent established navigation restrictions through carefully crafted HTML content. The issue stems from the browser's failure to properly validate payment-related policies, allowing malicious actors to manipulate the payment flow and potentially access restricted navigation paths that should have been blocked by security controls.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability resides in Chrome's payment handling architecture where policy enforcement mechanisms were inadequately configured to monitor and restrict navigation behaviors during payment transactions. When users encountered payment prompts, the browser's security controls should have maintained strict boundaries preventing unauthorized navigation attempts. However, the flaw enabled attackers to inject malicious HTML elements that could bypass these restrictions, effectively allowing navigation to arbitrary URLs or execution of unauthorized code sequences. This represents a classic case of inadequate input validation and policy enforcement that directly impacts the browser's security model.
The operational impact of CVE-2020-6483 extends beyond simple navigation bypass to potentially enable more sophisticated attack vectors within the payment ecosystem. Attackers could leverage this vulnerability to redirect users to malicious sites during payment processing, potentially harvesting sensitive financial information or deploying additional malware. The vulnerability's remote nature means that exploitation could occur without any local user interaction beyond visiting a compromised webpage, making it particularly dangerous in phishing campaigns or malicious advertising networks. This flaw directly impacts the trust model that users place in browser-based payment systems and could lead to financial losses for both consumers and merchants.
From a security framework perspective, this vulnerability aligns with CWE-693 which describes inadequate policy enforcement mechanisms and represents a failure in the principle of least privilege during payment processing operations. The issue also maps to ATT&CK technique T1059.001 for command and scripting interpreter execution, as attackers could potentially use the bypassed navigation to execute malicious scripts. Organizations should prioritize immediate patching of affected Chrome versions to remediate this vulnerability, while security teams should monitor for potential exploitation attempts through network traffic analysis and browser security logging. The remediation process requires updating to Chrome version 83.0.4103.61 or later where proper policy enforcement has been implemented to prevent such navigation bypass scenarios.
This vulnerability demonstrates the critical importance of maintaining robust security controls within browser-based payment systems where financial transactions occur. The flaw highlights the need for comprehensive testing of policy enforcement mechanisms and proper validation of navigation restrictions during sensitive operations. Security professionals should consider implementing additional monitoring for unusual navigation patterns during payment processing and establish incident response procedures specifically for browser-based payment vulnerabilities. The remediation efforts must include thorough testing of updated browser versions to ensure that similar policy enforcement gaps do not exist in other security-critical components of the payment processing pipeline.