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Discussion (85 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
According to the Chrome release page (https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2026/09/stable-channel...), Google paid a researcher $1000 for ethically reporting this.
The CVE associated with it (CVE-2026-85046) is already being exploited in the wild. If we put our thinking caps on, how much do you think this vulnerability is actually worth? How much do you think an organization like Google would spend on, for example, AI tokens or compute to detect this internally before it was found and exploited in the wild?
Ethical disclosure is a complicated topic, because researchers shouldn't hold bugs for ransom or demand high payment. But at the same time, if someone submits a critical issue like this, it makes sense to pay them what the bug's actually worth. Why should a researcher be effectively penalized for responsibly telling a vendor instead of selling the bug to a "research firm" or three-letter agency?
It's one thing if you're an open source project maintainer just trying to put something out to the community. The math is a lot different if you're Google.
Further: a vulnerability is probably not worth that much either, even if it's a hypercapable vulnerability, because the grey market buys full enablement kits, not vulnerability information. People making 6 figures on vulnerabilities are selling fully enabled full chain exploit systems, not just intelligence about a sandbox escape.
I'd point out that part of the reason the grey and black market pays so well is because it is that type of market. You have to pay people extra to look past their morals and a risk premium against potential reputational and legal consequences.
That said, the gap is probably not just that.
Someone could sell it on the black market, sell it to Google, or just move on with their life and not sell it.
I don't know what this is worth on the black market, maybe I'd be scammed by even trying to sell it. Maybe I don't want to be a bad person. These are all things that go into the prices
* They pay for vulnerabilities without reliable exploits (more for vulnerabilities that are demonstrably reliable).
* They don't require you to actually build a reliable exploit chain.
* They pay up front, not in tranches.
* They work with essentially all comers, unlike the grey market, where you're generally subcontracting to sell your first few.
Remember that you can sell the same vulnerability to multiple people: it's software you can copy.
nothing will change until big tech can no longer rip off security researchers
In the world where security issues are paid for entirely at market rate, it would also be very important to not use browsers by poor groups because they would be unable to pay for security reports on the market and consequently the browsers would be less secure.
Interesting idea, for sure, but I don't think it lands in a place I want to go since I neither desire stochastic payments nor desire that all browsers should be from large corporations.
Having just a Sandbox RCE is neat, I've got some on my laptop currently, but it's just a piece of the puzzle.
On average, probably not that much. What's the amortized cost of all testing, static analysis, and audit / code review, per "prevented potential bug"?
Why not? Capitalism requires they maximize their value. These profitable companies lay bare at the altar, so they should understand the requirements of their god.
> viewed it as insurance
Of course. Beyond the ethics, the social obligation, sleeping well at night by compensating hardworking people fairly.
“We can’t pay more or we’d have to hire more human reviewers” should never be a massive company’s line of thinking.
in the darkweb, due to crypto, a lot. there is where the $ is, whether it's stealing crypto directly or phishing developers.
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3514
It's not the Bonzi-buddy and driveby-installed IE toolbars wild west of the early 00s.
Like cellphones, javascript became necessary if you want to use webmail, access your bank's website, or whatever.
It's the classic thing. Across every fucking god damn last demographic, short of people with true empathy, no one *gives a fuck* until it affects them, or someone within (1-3) degrees of separatation. And having broad empathy is generally a good way to get yourself labeled/astrocized: both about as obvious "compriate" and obvious "adversary".
https://github.com/GrapheneOS/Vanadium/releases
https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases
Only if you use Nightly wait maybe not.
> Type confusion in V8 in Google Chrome prior to 152.0.7977.82 allowed a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code inside the sandbox via a crafted HTML page.
So it was fixed in 152.0.7977.82 (before .83), if I read that right.
"CISA maintains the authoritative source of vulnerabilities that have been exploited in the wild."
Is this chained with n-days?
It's because User Interaction is Required. CVSS 10 would be the case where everyone can be exploited without interaction.
Interestingly the 8.8 is more alert-worthy than the 9.8 and 10 cvss, because there is a need to be alerted of the current security risk, whereas with a cvss 2 vuln, there is nothing to be done by users, only admins.
Even with the sandbox protection layer, the rest of the parameters are maxed out.
"Sorry, but to enter this shop you need to take one of the used syringes from that pile some dude delivers every day and poke yourself with it."
The "all chromium versions" part of the title is also misleading, most browser CVEs do not distinguish between "untested lower bound" vs "affects all" (even though it seems like it'd be trivial to bisect).
(And no, I don't use it except for testing).
That said I still use Firefox for other reasons.
I simply don’t trust google, I don’t trust Mozilla either but I do trust them more than Google and you do kinda have to have a browser to function in the modern world.