Audits

Apple: WebKit Bugs Exploited to Hack Older iPhones

Apple late Monday shipped an out-of-band iOS update for older iPhones and iPads alongside a warning that a pair of WebKit security vulnerabilities may have been actively exploited.

Ryan Naraine

June 14, 2021

Apple late Monday shipped an out-of-band iOS update for older iPhones and iPads alongside a warning that a pair of WebKit security vulnerabilities may have been actively exploited.

As is customary, Apple did not provide details on the zero-day attacks, which appear to be aimed at a range of older models of Apple flagship iPhone devices.

The latest iOS 12.5.4 patch covers at least three documented security holes that expose unpatched devices to arbitrary code execution attacks.

According to Apple, two flaws in the WebKit rendering engine could be exploited via booby-trapped web content to execute code on devices running iOS 12.

[ SEE: Apple Adds ‘BlastDoor’ to Secure iPhones ]

The two WebKit bugs (CVE-2021-30761 and CVE-2021-30762) are memory corruption and use-after-free issues that Apple says were fixed with improved state management.

“Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited,” the company said. No other details on the nature of the attacks, victim data or IOCs were provided.

The iOS 12.5.4 also fixes a memory corruption issue in the ASN.1 decoder that could expose older iPhone to code execution attacks.

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Written By Ryan Naraine

Ryan Naraine is Editor-at-Large at SecurityWeek and host of the popular Security Conversations podcast series. He is a security community engagement expert who has built programs at major global brands, including Intel Corp., Bishop Fox and GReAT. Ryan is a founding-director of the Security Tinkerers non-profit, an advisor to early-stage entrepreneurs, and a regular speaker at security conferences around the world.

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