CVE-2020-16038 Use after free in Chrome

What is CVE-2020-16038?

CVE-2020-16038 is a high-severity use after free vulnerability in Google Chrome, published on 8 Jan 2021. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.

Official description

Use after free in media in Google Chrome on OS X prior to 87.0.4280.88 allowed a remote attacker to potentially exploit heap corruption via a crafted HTML page.

Weakness: CWE-787, CWE-416

Which versions are affected by CVE-2020-16038?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Google Chrome.

How do I fix CVE-2020-16038?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

Upgrade to the fixed version. These bugs are found with fuzzing and sanitisers and avoided by memory-safe languages. More about Use after free.

Is CVE-2020-16038 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2020-16038 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Google Chrome

• CVE-2022-4135 Google Chromium GPU Heap Buffer Overflow Exploited Critical 9.6
• CVE-2020-16017 Google Chrome Use-After-Free Exploited Critical 9.6
• CVE-2020-16010 Google Chrome for Android UI Heap Buffer Overflow Exploited Critical 9.6
• CVE-2026-87491 Google Chromium V8 Out of Bounds Write Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2026-85046 Google Chromium V8 Type Confusion Exploited High 8.8

All Google Chrome vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2020-16038, GHSA-j6j9-67jq-2hgx, UBUNTU-CVE-2020-16038.