Apple Patches Over 50 Vulnerabilities in macOS Catalina

Security updates released by Apple this week address numerous vulnerabilities in macOS Catalina, iOS and iPadOS, Safari, and other software products.

macOS Catalina has received patches for the largest number of vulnerabilities, namely 52. The most affected component was tcpdump, with a total of 32 vulnerabilities. Apple fixed the security flaws by updating to tcpdump version 4.9.3 and libpcap version 1.9.1.

Apple also patched 6 security bugs in OpenLDAP by updating to version 2.4.28, as well as four vulnerabilities in Kernel, through improved memory handling. Other components that received fixes included ATS, Bluetooth, CallKit, CFNetwork Proxies, CUPS, FaceTime, libexpat, and Security.

The addressed issues included arbitrary code execution with system or kernel privileges, denial of service, disclosure of user information, elevation of privilege, and an application’s ability to read restricted memory, among others.

While most of the vulnerabilities impact macOS Catalina 10.15 only, some of them were found to affect macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 and macOS Mojave 10.14.6 as well.

The updates released for iOS and iPadOS patch a total of 14 vulnerabilities. Of these, a FaceTime bug that could lead to arbitrary code execution was also addressed with the release of iOS 12.4.4, which is for iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPad Air, iPad mini 2, iPad mini 3, and iPod touch 6th generation.

The FaceTime vulnerability was reported to Apple by Natalie Silvanovich of Google Project Zero. This was not the first time Silvanovich informed Apple of a potentially serious FaceTime flaw.

The remaining flaws were patched in iOS 13.3 and iPadOS 13.3 — these are for iPhone 6s and later, iPad Air 2 and later, iPad mini 4 and later, and iPod touch 7th generation — and affect the CallKit, CFNetwork Proxies, FaceTime, IOSurfaceAccelerator, IOUSBDeviceFamily, Kernel, libexpat, Photos, Security, and WebKit components.

The issues could lead to arbitrary code execution, improper sharing of audio and video data, disclosure of user information, elevation of privileges, or to calls initiated with Siri on devices with two active plans being made on the wrong cellular plan.

watchOS 6.1.1 (for Apple Watch Series 1 and later) includes patches for 10 vulnerabilities in CallKit, CFNetwork Proxies, FaceTime, IOUSBDeviceFamily, Kernel, libexpat, Security, and WebKit. tvOS 13.3 addresses 11 security flaws in these components.

Apple also addressed the FaceTime flaw discovered by Silvanovich in watchOS 5.3.4.

Safari 13.0.4 was released with patches for two vulnerabilities in WebKit that could lead to arbitrary code execution, while Xcode 11.3 arrived with a fix for an issue in ld64 that could result in arbitrary code execution with user privileges.

More information on these security updates can be found on Apple’s support page.

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