Electron: Use-after-free in PowerMonitor on Windows and macOS

Impact

Apps that use the powerMonitor module may be vulnerable to a use-after-free. After the native PowerMonitor object is garbage-collected, the associated OS-level resources (a message window on Windows, a shutdown handler on macOS) retain dangling references. A subsequent session-change event (Windows) or system shutdown (macOS) dereferences freed memory, which may lead to a crash or memory corruption.

All apps that access powerMonitor events (suspend, resume, lock-screen, etc.) are potentially affected. The issue is not directly renderer-controllable.

Workarounds

There are no app side workarounds, you must update to a patched version of Electron.

Fixed Versions

• 41.0.0-beta.8
• 40.8.0
• 39.8.1
• 38.8.6

For more information

If there are any questions or comments about this advisory, please email [email protected]