Apple has rolled out security updates to iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS, and Safari to address several security vulnerabilities, including one actively exploited zero-day bug in the wild.
Tracked as CVE-2023-38606, the shortcoming resides in the kernel and permits a malicious app to modify sensitive kernel state potentially. The company said it was addressed with improved state management.
“Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited against versions of iOS released before iOS 15.7.1,” the tech giant noted in its advisory.
It’s worth noting that CVE-2023-38606 is the fourth security vulnerability discovered in connection with Operation Triangulation, a sophisticated mobile cyber espionage campaign targeting iOS devices since 2019 using a zero-click exploit chain. The other two zero-days, CVE-2023-32434 and CVE-2023-32435, were patched by Apple last month.
A third shortcoming, CVE-2022-46690, was addressed as part of security updates published in December 2022, six months prior to when the activity was publicly disclosed.
Kaspersky researchers Valentin Pashkov, Mikhail Vinogradov, Georgy Kucherin, Leonid Bezvershenko, and Boris Larin have been credited with discovering and reporting the flaw.
The updates are available for the following devices and operating systems –
- iOS 16.6 and iPadOS 16.6 – iPhone 8 and later, iPad Pro (all models), iPad Air 3rd generation and later, iPad 5th generation and later, and iPad mini 5th generation and later
- iOS 15.7.8 and iPadOS 15.7.8 – iPhone 6s (all models), iPhone 7 (all models), iPhone SE (1st generation), iPad Air 2, iPad mini (4th generation), and iPod touch (7th generation)
- macOS Ventura 13.5, macOS Monterey 12.6.8, and macOS Big Sur 11.7.9
- tvOS 16.6 – Apple TV 4K (all models) and Apple TV HD, and
- watchOS 9.6 – Apple Watch Series 4 and later
With the latest round of patches, Apple has resolved a total of 11 zero-days impacting its software since the start of 2023. It also comes two weeks after the company published emergency fixes for an actively exploited bug in WebKit that could lead to arbitrary code execution (CVE-2023-37450).
