Apple released an emergency patch to address CVE-2019-8605 iOS flaw

Apple has released an emergency patch in iOS 12.4.1 that addresses the CVE-2019-8605 use-after-free vulnerability that allowed iPhone jailbreak.

Recently, Apple accidentally unpatched a vulnerability it had already fixed, making current versions of iOS vulnerable to hackers and allowing the jailbreak of the devices.

Experts discovered that the iOS version 12.4 released in June has reintroduced a security flaw found by a Google Project Zero white hat hacker that was previously fixed in iOS 12.3.

A public Jailbreak for iPhones in was published by the Pwn20wnd hacker, it works with the latest version of the iOS mobile operating system. Google Project Zero expert Ned Williamson confirmed that the jailbreak worked on his iPhone.

The flaw potentially exposed iPhone devices running 12.4 version and older iOS versions (any 11.x and 12.x below 12.3) to the risk of a hack until the 12.4.1will be released.

Now Apple has released an emergency patch to address the CVE-2019-8605 kernel issue, the fix is available for iPhone 5s and later, iPad Air and later, and iPod touch 6th generation.

“A malicious application may be able to execute arbitrary code with system privileges,” reads the advisory published by Apple. “A use after free issue was addressed with improved memory management.”

The vulnerability was initially reported by Google Project Zero white hacker Ned Williamson, who also published an exploit for iOS 12.2, dubbed “SockPuppet,” after the first patch was released.

The expert Pwn20wnd confirmed that the emergency patch released by apple definitively addressed the CVE-2019-8605 vulnerability.

Apple has also released security updates to address the kernel issue in macOS Mojave and tvOS.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – CVE-2019-8605, hacking)

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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”.