Google has updated the Chrome browser to address an actively exploited high-severity zero-day flaw in the V8 engine and 11 other vulnerabilities.
The exploited security issue, identified as CVE-2026-85046, is described as a type confusion. It was reported to Google by researcher Salvatore Gulizia, known online as “Serotav.”
The update brings Chrome to version 152.0.7977.82/.83 on Windows and macOS, and 152.0.7977.82 on Linux, as part of a gradual rollout..
“Google is aware that an exploit for CVE-2026-85046 exists in the wild,” the advisory reads.
The company did not disclose any technical or specific exploitation details about the flaw to give users and dependent projects time to apply the fix.
Type confusion flaws cause software to misinterpret one type of object as another, allowing attackers to corrupt memory.
V8 is Chrome’s open-source JavaScript and WebAssembly engine, which compiles and executes code used by websites.
Hence, CVE-2026-85046 could potentially be triggered by a specially crafted HTML page containing malicious JavaScript, potentially allowing remote code execution within Chrome’s sandboxed renderer process.
The update also addresses nine other high-severity vulnerabilities, including use-after-free and out-of-bounds memory flaws in Crash Reporting, Network, Compositing, WebGL, CacheStorage, DevTools, Skia, and a race condition in V8.
CVE-2026-85046 is the sixth actively exploited bug Google has fixed in Chrome since the start of the year. Previous fixes include:
- An out-of-bounds read and write vulnerability in Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine (CVE-2026-11645), exploited in the wild and patched in June.
- An iterator invalidation vulnerability (CVE-2026-2441) in CSSFontFeatureValuesMap, Chrome’s implementation of CSS font feature values, fixed in mid-February.
- Two additional Chrome zero-days exploited in March attacks: an out-of-bounds write flaw in the Skia 2D graphics library (CVE-2026-3909) and an inappropriate implementation issue in the V8 JavaScript and WebAssembly engine (CVE-2026-3910).
- A use-after-free vulnerability in Dawn (CVE-2026-5281), the cross-platform implementation of the WebGPU standard used by Chromium, was patched in April.
Chrome users are recommended to apply the available update as soon as the rollout reaches them by going to Settings > About Chrome and waiting for the update to download and install.
After the update process is done, a browser restart is required for the fixes to apply.
A similar action is recommended for users of Chrome-based browsers, including Microsoft Edge, Brave, Opera, and Vivaldi, though it may take a couple of extra days for fixes to arrive on those apps.
Overall prevention scores can hide what happens after initial access. Once attackers are using valid credentials, prevention drops sharply.
The Blue Report 2026 measures defenses technique by technique across 338 million simulations run in customer production environments.
