Apple addressed actively exploited zero-day flaws in iOS, macOS, and Safari

Apple rolled out security updates to address actively exploited zero-day flaws in iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and Safari.

Apple addressed a set of vulnerabilities in iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and the Safari browser that were actively exploited in the wild.

The IT giant addressed the zero-day vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2023-32434 and CVE-2023-32435, exploited as part of the recently disclosed Operation Triangulation.

Recently, Kaspersky researchers dug into Operation Triangulation and discovered more details about the exploit chain employed to deliver the spyware to iOS devices. In early June, researchers from the Russian firm Kaspersky uncovered a previously unknown APT group that is targeting iOS devices with zero-click exploits as part of a long-running campaign dubbed Operation Triangulation.

The experts discovered the attack while monitoring the network traffic of their own corporate Wi-Fi network dedicated to mobile devices using the Kaspersky Unified Monitoring and Analysis Platform (KUMA).

According to Kaspersky researchers, Operation Triangulation began at least in 2019 and is still ongoing.

The attack chains commenced with a message sent via the iMessage service to an iOS device. The message has an attachment containing an exploit. The expert explained that the message triggers a remote code execution vulnerability without any user interaction (zero-click).

Below are the description for the two issues addressed by Apple:

CVE-2023-32434 – An integer overflow that resides in the Kernel, it was addressed with improved input validation. An app may can trigger the vulnerability to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges. Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited against versions of iOS released before iOS 15.7.
CVE-2023-32435 – A memory corruption vulnerability in WebKit that can be exploited to achieve arbitrary code execution when processing specially crafted web content. Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited against versions of iOS released before iOS 15.7.

Both issues have been reported by Georgy Kucherin (@kucher1n), Leonid Bezvershenko (@bzvr_), and Boris Larin (@oct0xor) of Kaspersky.

Another zero-day fixed by Apple, not exploited as part of Operation Triangulation, is an arbitrary code execution tracked as CVE-2023-32439. The company addressed the vulnerability with improved checks.

“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.” reads the advisory published the company.

The list of Apple security updates is available here.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, zero-day)

Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.