CVE-2026-79053 in Chrome
Summary
by MITRE • 08/26/2026
Missing authorization in Lighthouse in Google Chrome prior to 152.0.7977.65 allowed a remote attacker who had compromised the renderer process and leveraged social engineering to bypass site isolation 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 missing authorization in Google Chrome's Lighthouse component represents a significant breach of browser security boundaries, specifically targeting the integrity of site isolation mechanisms. Site isolation is a critical defense-in-depth strategy employed by modern web browsers to prevent cross-site data theft and other attacks that rely on reading sensitive information from one website while viewing another. By ensuring that each origin runs in its own process with separate memory spaces, browsers mitigate risks associated with side-channel attacks such as Spectre or simple cross-origin read vulnerabilities. The flaw within Lighthouse prior to version 152.0.7977.65 undermined this protection by allowing a compromised renderer process to bypass these isolation checks under specific conditions. This indicates that the internal authorization logic governing access between different security contexts was insufficiently strict, permitting operations that should have been blocked if proper privilege verification had occurred.
The operational impact of this vulnerability is particularly severe due to its reliance on social engineering and prior compromise of the renderer process. An attacker does not need a zero-day exploit against the browser engine itself but rather needs to leverage an existing compromise or injection into a web page's JavaScript context. Once the renderer process is compromised, typically through a cross-site scripting attack or malicious script execution, the attacker can craft a specific HTML payload that interacts with Lighthouse APIs in a way that exploits the missing authorization check. This allows the attacker to perform actions across different origins without triggering the expected security warnings or restrictions. The ability to bypass site isolation effectively neutralizes one of Chrome's most robust defenses against data exfiltration, potentially allowing an attacker to access cookies, local storage, or other sensitive state information belonging to a victim’s active sessions on unrelated websites.
From a classification perspective, this vulnerability aligns with CWE-269, which denotes Improper Privilege Management, specifically the failure to enforce required authorization checks before performing actions that affect system security boundaries. Furthermore, it relates closely to CWE-863, as it involves an incorrect enforcement of access control rules within a multi-process architecture. In terms of offensive cybersecurity frameworks such as MITRE ATT&CK, this behavior is consistent with techniques found under the T1059 category for Command and Scripting Interpreter abuse, where attackers use legitimate system tools or APIs to achieve unauthorized objectives. The specific tactic of bypassing site isolation can also be mapped to data exfiltration methods that rely on breaking process boundaries to access memory contents from other processes running different origins.
Mitigation strategies primarily involve updating the browser software to version 152.0.7977.65 or later, where these authorization checks have been hardened and validated by Chromium security engineers. For organizations unable to patch immediately due to compatibility concerns, implementing strict Content Security Policy headers can help mitigate the risk of renderer compromise in the first place by restricting script execution sources and preventing unauthorized API calls. Additionally, enabling enhanced site isolation settings within Chrome’s flags or enterprise policies can provide an additional layer of protection against process-based attacks. Users should remain vigilant regarding social engineering tactics that attempt to trick them into visiting malicious pages designed to exploit such browser-level flaws, as the success of this attack vector depends heavily on user interaction and prior compromise of the browsing context.