Pierluigi Paganini May 18, 2023

Apple released security updates to address three zero-day vulnerabilities in iPhones, Macs, and iPads that are actively exploited in attacks.

Apple has addressed three new zero-day vulnerabilities that are actively exploited in attacks in the wild to hack into iPhones, Macs, and iPads.

The three vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2023-32409, CVE-2023-28204, and CVE-2023-32373, reside in the WebKit browser engine. Below are the details of the three issues:

• CVE-2023-32409 – A remote attacker may be able to break out of Web Content sandbox. Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited. The flaw was reported by Clément Lecigne of Google’s Threat Analysis Group and Donncha Ó Cearbhaill of Amnesty International’s Security Lab. Despite Apple did not provide details about the attacks, the three issues were likely exploited in attacks conducted by nation-state actors or by surveillance firms.
• CVE-2023-28204 – Processing web content may disclose sensitive information. Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited. The flaw was reported by an anonymous researcher.
• CVE-2023-32373 – 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. The flaw was reported by an anonymous researcher.

“Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited,” reads the advisory [1, 2] published by the tech giant.

The company released iOS and iPadOS 16.5, tvOS 16.5, watchOS 9.5, Safari 16.5, and macOS Ventura 13.4 to address the issues.

Apple initially addressed both CVE-2023-28204 and CVE-2023-32373 with the Rapid Security Response (RSR) patches for iOS 16.4.1 and macOS 13.3.1 on May 1.

Since the beginning of 2023, the company addressed a total of six zero-day vulnerabilities exploited in attacks in the wild.

In February, the company released emergency security updates to address an actively exploited zero-day vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-23529, that impacts iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. The flaw is a type confusion issue in WebKit that was addressed by the IT giant with improved checks.

An attacker can achieve arbitrary code execution by tricking the victims into visiting maliciously crafted web content.

In April Apple released emergency security updates to address two actively exploited zero-day vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2023-28205 and CVE-2023-28206, impacting iPhones, Macs, and iPads.

The CVE-2023-28205 flaw is a use after free issue that resides in the WebKit, its exploitation may lead to arbitrary code execution. An attacker can trigger the flaw by tricking the victims into loading maliciously crafted web pages.

The CVE-2023-28206 flaw is an out-of-bounds write issue that resides in the IOSurfaceAccelerator.

In February, Apple addressed one more WebKit zero-day (CVE-2023-23529) exploited in attacks to gain code execution on vulnerable iPhones, iPads, and Macs.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Apple)