Apple announced on Tuesday the release of iOS 10, Xcode 8 and watchOS 3. The new versions patch several vulnerabilities that can be exploited for information disclosure, arbitrary code execution and denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.
iOS 10 resolves a total of seven vulnerabilities. One of them, tracked as CVE-2016-4741 and reported by Raul Siles of DinoSec, can be exploited by a man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacker to prevent a device from receiving updates. Apple fixed the issue by ensuring that iOS updates are performed over an HTTPS connection.
Researchers from the Politehnica University of Bucharest in Romania, North Carolina State University in the U.S. and Technische Universität Darmstadt in Germany have been credited for reporting two iOS vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious applications to access location data (CVE-2016-4719) or determine whom a user is texting (CVE-2016-4620).
iOS 10 also fixes a vulnerability related to how the keyboard autocorrect feature could reveal sensitive information (CVE-2016-4746), an issue that allows an MitM attacker to intercept email credentials (CVE-2016-4747), and a flaw that exposes messages on devices that have not been signed in to the Messages app (CVE-2016-4740).
An anonymous researcher discovered that a flaw in the AirPrint preview feature can result in unencrypted documents being written to a temporary file (CVE-2016-4749).
Many users reported that their iPhones and iPads got “bricked” after they updated iOS to version 10. This forced Apple to quickly release iOS 10.0.1, which also includes another fix for one of the “Trident” vulnerabilities patched by the company last month in iOS 9.3.5.
Since the Apple Watch operating system watchOS is based on iOS, CVE-2016-4719 affects both OSs. watchOS 3 patches this information disclosure flaw.
As for Xcode, version 8 resolves two vulnerabilities that allow a local attacker to crash the application or execute arbitrary code. The security holes, identified as CVE-2016-4704 and CVE-2016-4705, were reported to Apple by researchers at Chinese companies Qihoo 360 and Tencent.
Apple recently issued emergency updates for iOS, OS X and Safari after researchers reported finding three zero-day vulnerabilities that had been leveraged to spy on human rights activists and journalists.