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Mallory
High

Use-after-free in Google Chrome Extensions

IdentifiersCVE-2026-4458CWE-416· Use After Free

CVE-2026-4458 is a high-severity use-after-free vulnerability in the Extensions component of Google Chrome affecting versions prior to 146.0.7680.153. According to the provided content, the flaw can be triggered via a crafted Chrome extension. The vulnerability arises from improper lifetime management of memory in the Extensions subsystem, leading to a stale pointer dereference after the underlying object has been freed. If successfully exploited, this memory corruption condition could be leveraged to corrupt heap state and potentially achieve further code execution within the browser context.

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ANALYST BRIEF

Impact, mitigation & remediation

What it means. What to do now. Patch path, mitigations, and the assume-compromise checklist.

Impact

What an attacker gets, and what they’ve been doing with it.

Successful exploitation may allow heap corruption in Chrome. Depending on exploit reliability and the execution context reached through the corrupted memory state, this could result in arbitrary code execution, browser process compromise, denial of service through renderer or browser crashes, or potentially information disclosure. The provided content specifically states that exploitation is possible when an attacker convinces a user to install a malicious extension.

Mitigation

If you can’t patch tonight, do this now.

Where immediate patching is not possible, reduce exposure by restricting extension installation to trusted sources, enforcing enterprise extension allowlists, disabling or tightly controlling sideloading and developer-mode extension installation, and removing untrusted or unnecessary extensions. User awareness measures to prevent installation of attacker-supplied extensions also reduce exploitability. These are compensating controls only and do not replace patching.

Remediation

Patch, then assume compromise.

Upgrade Google Chrome to version 146.0.7680.153 or later. The provided content identifies Chrome versions prior to 146.0.7680.153 as vulnerable. Apply the latest Stable channel update appropriate for the platform and ensure Chromium-based downstream packages incorporate the corresponding fixes.
PUBLIC EXPLOITS

Exploits

No public exploits tracked yet. Mallory keeps watching.

VALID 0 / 0 TOTALView more in app

No public exploit code observed for this vulnerability.

EXPOSURE SURFACE

Affected products & vendors

Products and vendors Mallory has correlated with this vulnerability. Open in Mallory to drill down to specific CPE configurations and version ranges.

VendorProductType
GoogleChromeapplication

Vendor-confirmed product mapping. Mallory continuously reconciles this list against your asset inventory.

What this page doesn’t show

The version that knows your environment.

This page is what’s public. Mallory adds the parts that aren’t: which of your assets are affected, which adversaries are exploiting it right now, which detections to deploy, and what to do tonight.
Exposure mapping

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Threat actor evidence

Every observed campaign linking this CVE to a named adversary.

Associated malware

Malware families riding this exploit, with evidence and IOCs.

Detection signatures

YARA, Sigma, Snort, and vendor rules, auto-deployed to your SIEM.

Vendor-by-vendor mapping

Cross-references every affected SKU, including bundled OEM variants.

Social activity4

Community discussion across Reddit, Mastodon, and other social sources.