Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Mobile & Wireless

Apple Patches Vulnerabilities That Earned Hackers $600,000 at Chinese Contest

The iOS and macOS security updates released on Monday by Apple patch vulnerabilities that earned researchers more than $600,000 at a Chinese hacking contest earlier this year.

The iOS and macOS security updates released on Monday by Apple patch vulnerabilities that earned researchers more than $600,000 at a Chinese hacking contest earlier this year.

Apple has patched 42 vulnerabilities with the release of iOS 15.2 and iPadOS 15.2, and 46 flaws with the release of macOS Monterey 12.1.

A source told SecurityWeek that six of the vulnerabilities patched this week were disclosed at the Tianfu Cup hacking contest that took place in October.

At the event, participants earned a total of roughly $1.9 million for exploits targeting Windows 10, Ubuntu, iOS 15 on iPhone 13 Pro, Microsoft Exchange, Chrome, Safari, Adobe Reader, Parallels Desktop, QEMU, Docker, VMware ESXi and Workstation, and ASUS routers.

The biggest single reward, $300,000, was earned by Team Pangu for a remote jailbreak targeting the iPhone 13 Pro with iOS 15. The exploit was triggered with a single click on a specially crafted link.

The team representing Chinese cybersecurity company Cyber Kunlun, which won the event with a total of $654,500 in rewards, earned $180,000 for its Apple exploits. A team representing cybersecurity firm Qihoo 360 earned $90,000 for its Apple exploits.

The vulnerabilities exploited by Team Pangu at the event are CVE-2021-30983, a buffer overflow in the IOMobileFrameBuffer that can be exploited for arbitrary code execution with kernel privileges, and CVE-2021-30951, a use-after-free bug in WebKit that can be used for code execution via maliciously crafted web content.

The Kunlun team has been credited by Apple for reporting CVE-2021-30984, a race condition in WebKit that allows arbitrary code execution, and CVE-2021-30954, a WebKit type confusion bug that can be exploited for code execution.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

A vulnerability exploited at Tianfu Cup by the Qihoo 360 team is CVE-2021-30953, an out-of-bounds read vulnerability in WebKit that can allow remote code execution.

Apple also patched CVE-2021-30952, an integer overflow in WebKit that can be used for remote code execution. A team called WeBin earned $40,000 for its exploit at Tianfu Cup.

All of the WebKit flaws affect both iOS and macOS.

While the researchers who disclosed the vulnerabilities earned more than half a million dollars for their exploits at the hacking contest, Apple has not paid out any additional bug bounties, SecurityWeek’s source said.

*updated to add information on CVE-2021-30952 and to correct the amount won by Kunlun to $180,000 and the total amount to $600,000

Related: Chrome 95 Update Patches Exploited Zero-Days, Flaws Disclosed at Tianfu Cup

Related: Printers Hacked for First Time at Pwn2Own

Written By

Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a managing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.

Click to comment

Trending

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join the session as we discuss the challenges and best practices for cybersecurity leaders managing cloud identities.

Register

SecurityWeek’s Ransomware Resilience and Recovery Summit helps businesses to plan, prepare, and recover from a ransomware incident.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Vulnerabilities

Less than a week after announcing that it would suspended service indefinitely due to a conflict with an (at the time) unnamed security researcher...

Data Breaches

OpenAI has confirmed a ChatGPT data breach on the same day a security firm reported seeing the use of a component affected by an...

IoT Security

A group of seven security researchers have discovered numerous vulnerabilities in vehicles from 16 car makers, including bugs that allowed them to control car...

Vulnerabilities

A researcher at IOActive discovered that home security systems from SimpliSafe are plagued by a vulnerability that allows tech savvy burglars to remotely disable...

Risk Management

The supply chain threat is directly linked to attack surface management, but the supply chain must be known and understood before it can be...

Cybercrime

Patch Tuesday: Microsoft calls attention to a series of zero-day remote code execution attacks hitting its Office productivity suite.

Vulnerabilities

Patch Tuesday: Microsoft warns vulnerability (CVE-2023-23397) could lead to exploitation before an email is viewed in the Preview Pane.

Vulnerabilities

The latest Chrome update brings patches for eight vulnerabilities, including seven reported by external researchers.