Google · Chrome FreeType
CVE-2020-15999
Google Chrome FreeType Heap Buffer Overflow Vulnerability
What it is
Heap buffer overflow in Freetype in Google Chrome prior to 86.0.4240.111 allowed a remote attacker to potentially exploit heap corruption via a crafted HTML page.
CISA: Google Chrome uses FreeType, an open-source software library to render fonts, which contains a heap buffer overflow vulnerability in the function Load_SBit_Png when processing PNG images embedded into fonts. This vulnerability is part of an exploit chain with CVE-2020-17087 on Windows and CVE-2020-16010 on Android.
What to do
Apply updates per vendor instructions.
Deadline for US federal agencies: November 17, 2021
- Added to the CISA list
- November 3, 2021
- Published
- November 3, 2020
- Severity
- Critical 9.6 CVSS 3.1
- Chance of attacks in the next 30 days (EPSS)
- 64% in the top 0.8% of all known vulnerabilities
- Weakness
- CWE-787
- More details
- NVD · CVE.org · CISA
All references (10)
- http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-11/msg00016.html
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/J3QVIGAAJ4D6…
- https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202011-12
- https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202012-04
- https://www.debian.org/security/2021/dsa-4824
- https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202401-19
- https://crbug.com/1139963
- https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2020/10/stable-channel-update-for-desktop_20.html
- http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2020/Nov/33
- https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/p/rca-cve-2020-15999.html
More exploited flaws from Google
| Added | Vulnerability | Product | Severity | Attack chance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 27, 2026 | Unchecked Return Value | Brotli | Critical 9.2 | 55% |
| Sep 16, 2026 | Improper Authorization | Pixel | High 8.8 | 0.6% |
| Sep 9, 2026 | Out of Bounds Write | Chromium V8 | High 8.8 | 3.5% |
| Sep 4, 2026 | Type Confusion | Chromium V8 | High 8.8 | 1.8% |
| Jun 9, 2026 | Out-of-Bounds Read and Write | Chromium V8 | High 8.8 | 2.4% |
| Apr 1, 2026 | Use-After-Free | Dawn | High 8.8 | 14% |
| Mar 13, 2026 | Out-of-Bounds Write | Skia | High 8.8 | 2.3% |
| Mar 13, 2026 | Improper Restriction of Operations Within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer | Chromium V8 | High 8.8 | 2.7% |
Sources: Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (CISA, public domain), CVE records (cve.org) and EPSS (FIRST). The chance of attacks is the EPSS estimate that someone will try to exploit the flaw in the next 30 days.