What is CVE-2026-4676?
Use-after-free vulnerability in Dawn, Google's open-source cross-platform implementation of the WebGPU standard, in Google Chrome prior to 146.0.7680.165. The flaw allowed a remote attacker to potentially perform a sandbox escape via a crafted HTML page. Dawn translates WebGPU API calls into platform-specific GPU instructions (Vulkan on Linux, Metal on macOS, Direct3D 12 on Windows) and relies on raw pointers to reference-counted objects, creating conditions where stale pointers can persist after object deallocation. This vulnerability is part of a cluster of GPU-layer bugs discovered by the same pseudonymous researcher (_86ac1f1587b71893ed2ad792cd7dde32_) who also reported CVE-2026-4675 (heap buffer overflow in WebGL) and CVE-2026-5281 (Dawn use-after-free zero-day under active exploitation). The sandbox escape potential is particularly dangerous as Dawn provides a boundary-crossing path from the sandboxed renderer process through the WebGPU API to the GPU process running at higher privilege. Patched on March 23, 2026. All Chromium-based browsers were affected.
The record classifies CVE-2026-4676 under weakness class CWE-416. Its CVSS v3 base vector states that the flaw is reachable remotely over the network, needs no prior authentication, needs a user to take an action first, and has high impact on confidentiality, integrity, availability. 5 affected-product entries are recorded, across 5 vendors, listed below. The identifier was first published 195 days ago.
Severity and exploitation probability
- CVSS v3.1 base score
- 8.8 — HIGH
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H - EPSS (FIRST)
- 0.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 30.7% of all scored CVEs
- CISA KEV
- Not listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog
- Threadlinqs priority
- 5.6/10 — a Threadlinqs composite of the CVSS base score, the EPSS percentile and public exploit availability
- Published
- 2026-03-24
Is CVE-2026-4676 being exploited?
It currently carries a trending score of 18 in the Threadlinqs vulnerability feed.
Affected products and versions
How to fix CVE-2026-4676
The record marks a vendor fix as available for CVE-2026-4676. Patch reference: https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2026/03/stable-channel-update-for-desktop_23.html. Vendor advisory: https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2026/03/stable-channel-update-for-desktop_23.html. Apply the vendor fix referenced above to every affected product listed in this record, then confirm the running version against the vendor advisory.
Threat activity tracking CVE-2026-4676
No threat campaign in the Threadlinqs corpus currently references CVE-2026-4676, in its CVE list or as an indicator. The linkage is recomputed from the live corpus on every daily ingest, so this section fills in as soon as a tracked campaign cites the identifier.
Sources
Seeded from threat-derived and not yet processed by the Threadlinqs enrichment pipeline, so blank CVSS, EPSS or KEV fields above mean NOT MEASURED rather than measured-absent.