Apple backported patches for CVE-2022-42856 zero-day on older iPhones, iPads

Apple has backported the security updates for the zero-day vulnerability CVE-2022-42856 to older iPhones and iPads.

On December 2022, Apple released security updates to address a new zero-day vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2022-42856, that is actively exploited in attacks against iPhones.

The IT giant released security bulletins for iOS/iPadOS 15.7.2, Safari 16.2, tvOS 16.2, and macOS Ventura 13.1. Apple addressed the vulnerability with improved state handling for the iPhone 6s (all models), iPhone 7 (all models), iPhone SE (1st generation), iPad Pro (all models), iPad Air 2 and later, iPad 5th generation and later, iPad mini 4 and later, and iPod touch (7th generation).

The CVE-2022-42856 flaw is a type confusion issue that impacts the WebKit browser engine, an attacker can exploit the bug when processing specially crafted content to achieve arbitrary code execution.

“Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to arbitrary code execution. Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited against versions of iOS released before iOS 15.1.” reads the advisory published by Apple. “A type confusion issue was addressed with improved state handling.”

The vulnerability was reported by Clément Lecigne of Google’s Threat Analysis Group. At this time there are no public details about the attacks exploiting the vulnerability.

Apple this week has backported the security updates for the CVE-2022-42856 issue to older iPhones and iPads.

To secure older devices against attacks exploiting the above issue, Apple released iOS 12.5.7. The patches are now available also for iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPad Air, iPad mini 2, iPad mini 3, and iPod touch (6th generation).

On December 14, 2022, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) added the vulnerability to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog and ordered federal agencies to address it by January 04, 2022

The company addressed the zero-day bug with improved state handling for the following devices: iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPad Air, iPad mini 2, iPad mini 3, and iPod touch (6th generation).

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Apple)

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