Apple Patches Code Execution Flaws in iOS and iPadOS

Apple on Monday released a major point-upgrade to its flagship iOS and iPadOS mobile operating systems to patch a handful of serious security vulnerabilities.

The iOS 14.3 and iPadOS 14.3 release will provide cover for 11 documented security flaws, some serious enough to expose iPhones and iPads to code execution attacks.

The most serious of the bugs could allow hackers to launch harmful code on iPhones and iPads via a malicious font file.  Apple patched two separate memory corruption issues in the way input is validated in certain font files and warned that a successful exploit “may lead to arbitrary code execution.”

The two font parsing flaws — CVE-2020-27943 and CVE-2020-27944 — were discovered and reported by Mateusz Jurczyk of Google Project Zero.

Apple also documented three separate security holes in ImageIO, the programming interface framework that allows applications to read and write most image file formats.  Apple said it improved input validation to fix the ImageIO bugs, which allow code execution via booby-trapped images.    

The iOS and iPadOS patches also cover a logic error in App Store that may cause an enterprise application installation prompt to display the wrong domain; and a fix for a CoreAudio issue that could cause code execution via maliciously crafted audio files.