Number: AL19-019
Date: 4 November 2019
AUDIENCE
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This Alert is intended for IT professionals and managers of notified organizations.
PURPOSE
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An Alert is used to raise awareness of a recently identified cyber threat that may impact cyber information assets, and to provide additional detection and mitigation advice to recipients. The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security ("Cyber Centre") is also available to provide additional assistance regarding the content of this Alert to recipients as requested.
DETAILS
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The Cyber Centre has become aware that exploits for CVE-2019-13720 have been observed. On 31 October 2019, Google released a patch for Google Chrome to address this high severity zero-day, which is tied to the audio component of Google Chrome. This ‘use-after-free’ vulnerability , which is when an application tries to reference memory that has since been freed or deleted, can lead to arbitrary code execution. An actor could exploit the vulnerability by crafting a malicious webpage that takes advantage of the vulnerable Chrome component and then lure users into visiting the webpage.
A second high severity use-after-free vulnerability, CVE-2019-13721, has also been patched in the latest update. CVE-2019-13721 has not been observed as being actively exploited.
SUGGESTED ACTIONS
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- Update Google Chrome to the latest version, namely, 78.0.3904.87 at the time of publishing.
- Always exercise caution when receiving an unexpected email or email reply containing an attachment or URL, even when from a trusted source. If the email seems unusual, contact the sender to confirm the authenticity of the attachment.
- Follow the Cyber Centre’s guidance to stay CyberSafe.
REFERENCES
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Google Chrome Blog:
https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2019/10/stable-channel-update-for-desktop_31.html
ZDNet Article:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/halloween-scare-google-discloses-chrome-zero-day-exploited-in-the-wild/
Five Practical Ways to Make Yourself CyberSafe:
https://cyber.gc.ca/en/guidance/five-practical-ways-make-yourself-cybersafe
NOTE TO READERS
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The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (Cyber Centre) operates as part of the Communications Security Establishment. We are Canada's national authority on cyber security and we lead the government's response to cyber security events. As Canada's national computer security incident response team, the
Cyber Centre works in close collaboration with government departments, critical infrastructure , Canadian businesses and international partners to prepare for, respond to, mitigate, and recover from cyber events. We do this by providing authoritative advice and support, and coordinating information
sharing and incident response. The Cyber Centre is outward-facing, welcoming partnerships that help build a stronger, more resilient cyber space in Canada.