Apple addresses three actively exploited iOS zero-days

Apple released iOS 14.2 that addressed three zero-day vulnerabilities in its mobile OS that have been abused in attacks in the wild.

Apple has addressed three iOS zero-day vulnerabilities actively exploited in attacks the wild and affecting iPhone, iPad, and iPod devices.

The zero-day vulnerabilities have been fixed by the IT giant with the release of iOS 14.2, iOS users are advised to install it immediately.

“Apple is aware of reports that an exploit for this issue exists in the wild,” reads the security advisory.

Apple also fixed the flaws with the release of iPadOS 14.2 and watchOS 5.3.8, 6.2.9, and 7.1. The issues have also been addressed with the release of iOS 12.4.9 for older generation iPhone devices.

“Targeted exploitation in the wild similar to the other recently reported 0days,” said Shane Huntley, Director and Google’s Threat Analysis Group. “Not related to any election targeting.”

Targeted exploitation in the wild similar to the other recently reported 0days. Not related to any election targeting.

— Shane Huntley (@ShaneHuntley) November 5, 2020

The vulnerabilities are related to three recently disclosed vulnerabilities in Chrome (CVE-2020-17087, CVE-2020-16009, CVE-2020-16010) and in the Windows OS (CVE-2020-17087).

According to Google Project Zero team lead Ben Hawkes, the three iOS zero-days are:

1. CVE-2020-27930 — A memory corruption issue in the iOS FontParser component that was addressed with improved input validation and that lets attackers run code remotely on iOS devices.
2. CVE-2020-27932 — A type confusion issue in the iOS kernel that was addressed with improved state handling and that lets attackers run malicious code with kernel-level privileges.
3. CVE-2020-27950 — A memory initialization issue in the iOS kernel that allows attackers to retrieve content from an iOS device’s kernel memory.

Experts pointed out that the three flaws have been chained to fully compromise iPhone devices remotely.

Google has not published technical details about the threat actors that exploited the above issues in their attacks and their targets.

It is not clear if the threat actors have exploited the vulnerabilities in targeted attacks or in large-scale campaigns.

Pierluigi Paganini