Google Releases Chrome Update to Patch Actively Exploited V8 Zero-Day
Google on Thursday released security updates to patch 12 vulnerabilities, including one that has come under active exploitation in the wild.
The high-severity vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-85046 (CVSS score: 8.8), has been described as a type confusion bug in V8, Chrome's JavaScript and WebAssembly engine.
"Type confusion in V8 in Google Chrome prior to 152.0.7977.82 allowed a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code inside the sandbox via a crafted HTML page," reads a description of the flaw in CVE.org.
Security researcher Salvatore Gulizia (aka Serotav) has been credited with discovering and reporting the flaw on August 4, 2026. The researcher has been awarded a bug bounty of $1,000 for responsible disclosure.
In a separate blog post detailing the issue, Gulizia described it as a "V8 bug in the compilers that leads to an array containing PACKED_ELEMENTS to receive the map PACKED_SMI_ELEMENTS, this can be turned into arbitrary read/write on the JavaScript heap."
As is usual in these cases, Google acknowledged that an "exploit for CVE-2026-85046 exists in the wild," but did not reveal any details about the nature of the attacks so as to ensure that a majority of the users are updated with a fix and to prevent further exploitation.
With the latest development, Google has addressed a total of six actively exploited Chrome zero-days since the start of the year. This includes CVE-2026-2441, CVE-2026-3909, CVE-2026-3910, CVE-2026-5281, and CVE-2026-11645.
For optimal protection, users are advised to update their Chrome browser to versions 152.0.7977.82/.83 for Windows and Apple macOS, and 152.0.7977.82 for Linux. To make sure the latest updates are installed, users can navigate to More > Help > About Google Chrome and select Relaunch.
Users of other Chromium-based browsers, such as Microsoft Edge, Brave, Opera, and Vivaldi, are also advised to apply the fixes as and when they become available.
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