CVE-2020-9859 vulnerability in Apple Products
Published on June 5, 2020
Known Exploited Vulnerability
This Apple 11-13.5 XNU Kernel Vulnerability is part of CISA's list of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities. A memory consumption issue was addressed with improved memory handling. An application may be able to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges.
The following remediation steps are recommended / required by May 3, 2022: Apply updates per vendor instructions.
Vulnerability Analysis
CVE-2020-9859 can be exploited with local system access, and requires small amount of user privileges. This vulnerability is considered to have a low attack complexity. This vulnerability is known to be actively exploited by threat actors. The potential impact of an exploit of this vulnerability is considered to be very high.
Weakness Type
What is a Double-free Vulnerability?
The product calls free() twice on the same memory address, potentially leading to modification of unexpected memory locations. When a program calls free() twice with the same argument, the program's memory management data structures become corrupted. This corruption can cause the program to crash or, in some circumstances, cause two later calls to malloc() to return the same pointer. If malloc() returns the same value twice and the program later gives the attacker control over the data that is written into this doubly-allocated memory, the program becomes vulnerable to a buffer overflow attack.
CVE-2020-9859 has been classified to as a Double-free vulnerability or weakness.
Products Associated with CVE-2020-9859
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Affected Versions
Apple iOS:- Version unspecified and below iOS 13.5.1 and iPadOS 13.5.1 is affected.
- Version unspecified and below macOS Catalina 10.15.5 Supplemental Update is affected.
- Version unspecified and below tvOS 13.4.6 is affected.
- Version unspecified and below watchOS 6.2.6 is affected.
Exploit Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) scores estimate the probability that a vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days. The percentile shows you how this score compares to all other vulnerabilities.