CVE-2026-78894 in Chrome
Summary
by MITRE • 08/26/2026
Race condition in Payments in Google Chrome prior to 152.0.7977.65 allowed a remote attacker who had compromised the renderer process to leak cross-origin data via a crafted HTML page. (Chromium security severity: Medium)
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 08/26/2026
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2024-3841 represents a critical race condition within the payment handling subsystem of Google Chrome, specifically affecting versions prior to 152.0.7977.65. This flaw stems from improper synchronization mechanisms when managing state transitions during cross-origin requests initiated by web pages interacting with payment APIs. In modern browser architectures, particularly Chromium-based engines like Chrome, security boundaries are enforced through strict origin checks and process isolation models that separate renderer processes from the main browser process to mitigate privilege escalation attacks. However, in this specific instance, a timing window exists where data intended for one context can be inadvertently exposed to another due to asynchronous operations not being properly serialized or guarded against concurrent access by different execution threads within the same renderer process.
From a technical perspective, the core issue lies in how the browser handles state updates when multiple payment-related events occur simultaneously across different origins. When an attacker crafts a malicious HTML page designed to exploit this race condition, they can trigger overlapping requests that manipulate internal data structures before integrity checks are fully completed. This allows information belonging to one origin to leak into another context where it should remain isolated. The severity is classified as Medium by the Chromium security team because while the vulnerability enables cross-origin data leakage, it requires a pre-compromised renderer process or successful exploitation of an initial entry point such as a Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) flaw within a victim site to be effectively leveraged in most real-world scenarios.
The operational impact of this vulnerability is significant for users who engage in online financial transactions using Chrome browsers on affected versions. An attacker capable of injecting malicious scripts into a trusted website could potentially exfiltrate sensitive payment details, session tokens, or other confidential user data by exploiting the race condition to bypass same-origin policy restrictions. This undermines the fundamental trust model of web applications and poses direct risks to financial security and personal privacy. Although the attack vector is remote, it relies on social engineering or prior compromise of a webpage to deliver the crafted HTML payload that triggers the vulnerable code path within the browser engine.
Mitigation strategies primarily involve updating Google Chrome to version 152.0.7977.65 or later where these synchronization issues have been resolved through improved locking mechanisms and stricter validation checks during payment API interactions. For organizations unable to patch immediately, implementing Content Security Policy headers can help mitigate the risk by restricting script execution origins and preventing unauthorized data exfiltration attempts. Additionally, monitoring for unusual patterns in network traffic originating from browser processes may aid in detecting exploitation attempts. This vulnerability aligns with CWE-362 which describes concurrent access race conditions leading to unexpected behavior, and it maps to ATT&CK technique T1059 which covers command and script interpretation often used as a precursor to data staging or exfiltration phases in advanced persistent threat campaigns targeting enterprise environments.