• Home
  • Cyber Crime
  • Cyber warfare
  • APT
  • Data Breach
  • Deep Web
  • Digital ID
  • Hacking
  • Hacktivism
  • Intelligence
  • Internet of Things
  • Laws and regulations
  • Malware
  • Mobile
  • Reports
  • Security
  • Social Networks
  • Terrorism
  • ICS-SCADA
  • POLICIES
  • Contact me
MUST READ

SECURITY AFFAIRS MALWARE NEWSLETTER ROUND 51

 | 

Security Affairs newsletter Round 530 by Pierluigi Paganini – INTERNATIONAL EDITION

 | 

The FBI warns that Scattered Spider is now targeting the airline sector

 | 

LapDogs: China-nexus hackers Hijack 1,000+ SOHO devices for espionage

 | 

Taking over millions of developers exploiting an Open VSX Registry flaw

 | 

OneClik APT campaign targets energy sector with stealthy backdoors

 | 

APT42 impersonates cyber professionals to phish Israeli academics and journalists

 | 

Kai West, aka IntelBroker, indicted for cyberattacks causing $25M in damages

 | 

Cisco fixed critical ISE flaws allowing Root-level remote code execution

 | 

U.S. CISA adds AMI MegaRAC SPx, D-Link DIR-859 routers, and Fortinet FortiOS flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog

 | 

CitrixBleed 2: The nightmare that echoes the 'CitrixBleed' flaw in Citrix NetScaler devices

 | 

Hackers deploy fake SonicWall VPN App to steal corporate credentials

 | 

Mainline Health Systems data breach impacted over 100,000 individuals

 | 

Disrupting the operations of cryptocurrency mining botnets

 | 

Prometei botnet activity has surged since March 2025

 | 

The U.S. House banned WhatsApp on government devices due to security concerns

 | 

Russia-linked APT28 use Signal chats to target Ukraine official with malware

 | 

China-linked APT Salt Typhoon targets Canadian Telecom companies

 | 

U.S. warns of incoming cyber threats following Iran airstrikes

 | 

McLaren Health Care data breach impacted over 743,000 people

 | 
  • Home
  • Cyber Crime
  • Cyber warfare
  • APT
  • Data Breach
  • Deep Web
  • Digital ID
  • Hacking
  • Hacktivism
  • Intelligence
  • Internet of Things
  • Laws and regulations
  • Malware
  • Mobile
  • Reports
  • Security
  • Social Networks
  • Terrorism
  • ICS-SCADA
  • POLICIES
  • Contact me
  • Home
  • Breaking News
  • Security
  • An APFS Filesystem flaw could lead macOS losing data under certain conditions

An APFS Filesystem flaw could lead macOS losing data under certain conditions

Pierluigi Paganini February 19, 2018

The Apple expert Mike Bombich discovered an APFS Filesystem vulnerability that could lead macOS losing data under certain conditions.

A few days ago a ‘text bomb‘ bug was reported for Apple iOS and macOS apps, the issue can crash any Apple iPhone, iPad Or Mac.

Now the Apple expert Mike Bombich discovered an APFS Filesystem vulnerability that could lead macOS losing data under certain conditions.

The bug ties the way the operating system handles APFS sparse disk images formatted in Apple filesystem format APFS.

An Apple Disk Image is a disk image commonly used by the macOS operating system is “mounted” as a volume within the Finder. It contains the entire contents and structure of a disk volume, such as USB, CD, DVD, hard disk drive, or network share.

Disk images are commonly used by several Mac apps, for example for backup applications or disk cloning.

The expert discovered that APFS sparse disk images don’t properly manage the volume of the “free disk space” from the sparse disk image, the OS doesn’t correctly report “free disk space” respect the real “free disk space” value.

“Earlier this week I noticed that an APFS-formatted sparsebundle disk image volume showed ample free space, despite that the underlying disk was completely full. Curious, I copied a video file to the disk image volume to see what would happen. The whole file copied without error! I opened the file, verified that the video played back start to finish, checksummed the file – as far as I could tell, the file was intact and whole on the disk image.” wrote Mike Bombich. “When I unmounted and remounted the disk image, however, the video was corrupted. If you’ve ever lost data, you know the kick-in-the-gut feeling that would have ensued. Thankfully, I was just running some tests and the file that disappeared was just test data. Taking a closer look, I discovered two bugs in macOS’s “diskimages-helper” service that lead to this result.”

Bombich explained that data are written into the void because the OS doesn’t warn users that there is no enough space on the underlying hard drive to contain his data.

As described by the expert, the misleading data are still accessible for a short period after the write operation, unfortunately after the next system reboot exceeding files become corrupted and inaccessible.

APFS

Bombich is the author of the Mac backup software Carbon Copy Cloner, according to statistics from his software no many users are affected. The expert says that only 7% of all Carbon Copy Cloner users store backups as sparse disk image files and that only 12% of these 7% use APFS-formatted disk images.

The Carbon Copy Cloner software will not support AFPS-formatted sparse disk images until Apple addresses the vulnerability reported by Bombich.

Below a video PoC of the flaw.

https://youtu.be/k60NvrJnNOY

“Until Apple resolves this disk images bug, we strongly recommend that people avoid using APFS-formatted sparse disk images for any purpose with any application.” concluded the expert. 
[adrotate banner=”9″] [adrotate banner=”12″]

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – APFS, Data Leak)

[adrotate banner=”5″]

[adrotate banner=”13″]


facebook linkedin twitter

APFS Apple data leak macOS Pierluigi Paganini Security Affairs

you might also like

Pierluigi Paganini June 29, 2025
SECURITY AFFAIRS MALWARE NEWSLETTER ROUND 51
Read more
Pierluigi Paganini June 29, 2025
Security Affairs newsletter Round 530 by Pierluigi Paganini – INTERNATIONAL EDITION
Read more

leave a comment

newsletter

Subscribe to my email list and stay
up-to-date!

    recent articles

    SECURITY AFFAIRS MALWARE NEWSLETTER ROUND 51

    Breaking News / June 29, 2025

    Security Affairs newsletter Round 530 by Pierluigi Paganini – INTERNATIONAL EDITION

    Breaking News / June 29, 2025

    The FBI warns that Scattered Spider is now targeting the airline sector

    Cyber Crime / June 28, 2025

    LapDogs: China-nexus hackers Hijack 1,000+ SOHO devices for espionage

    Malware / June 28, 2025

    Taking over millions of developers exploiting an Open VSX Registry flaw

    Hacking / June 27, 2025

    To contact me write an email to:

    Pierluigi Paganini :
    pierluigi.paganini@securityaffairs.co

    LEARN MORE

    QUICK LINKS

    • Home
    • Cyber Crime
    • Cyber warfare
    • APT
    • Data Breach
    • Deep Web
    • Digital ID
    • Hacking
    • Hacktivism
    • Intelligence
    • Internet of Things
    • Laws and regulations
    • Malware
    • Mobile
    • Reports
    • Security
    • Social Networks
    • Terrorism
    • ICS-SCADA
    • POLICIES
    • Contact me

    Copyright@securityaffairs 2024

    We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept All”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. However, you may visit "Cookie Settings" to provide a controlled consent.
    Cookie SettingsAccept All
    Manage consent

    Privacy Overview

    This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities...
    Necessary
    Always Enabled
    Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
    Non-necessary
    Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
    SAVE & ACCEPT