The Hacker News : Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a now-patched security flaw in Google Chrome that could have permitted attackers to escalate privileges and gain access to local files on the system.

The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-0628 (CVSS score: 8.8), has been described as a case of insufficient policy enforcement in the WebView tag. It was patched by Google in early January 2026 in version 143.0.7499.192/.193 for Windows/Mac and 143.0.7499.192 for Linux.

« Insufficient policy enforcement in WebView tag in Google Chrome prior to 143.0.7499.192 allowed an attacker who convinced a user to install a malicious extension to inject scripts or HTML into a privileged page via a crafted Chrome extension, » according to a description on the NIST National Vulnerability Database (NVD).

Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researcher Gal Weizman, who discovered and reported the flaw on November 23, 2025, said the issue could have permitted malicious extensions with basic permissions to seize control of the new Gemini Live panel in Chrome.