apple ipados CVE-2022-48618 vulnerability in Apple Products
Published on January 9, 2024

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The issue was addressed with improved checks. This issue is fixed in macOS Ventura 13.1, watchOS 9.2, iOS 16.2 and iPadOS 16.2, tvOS 16.2. An attacker with arbitrary read and write capability may be able to bypass Pointer Authentication. Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been exploited against versions of iOS released before iOS 15.7.1.

Vendor Advisory Vendor Advisory Vendor Advisory Vendor Advisory NVD

Known Exploited Vulnerability

This Apple Multiple Products Improper Authentication Vulnerability is part of CISA's list of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities. Apple iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS contain an improper authentication vulnerability that allows an attacker with read and write capabilities to bypass Pointer Authentication.

The following remediation steps are recommended / required by February 21, 2024: Apply mitigations per vendor instructions or discontinue use of the product if mitigations are unavailable.

Vulnerability Analysis

CVE-2022-48618 is exploitable with local system access, and requires small amount of user privileges. This vulnerability is consided to have a high level of attack complexity. It has an exploitability score of 1.0 out of four. The potential impact of an exploit of this vulnerability is considered to be very high.

What is a TOCTTOU Vulnerability?

The software checks the state of a resource before using that resource, but the resource's state can change between the check and the use in a way that invalidates the results of the check. This can cause the software to perform invalid actions when the resource is in an unexpected state. This weakness can be security-relevant when an attacker can influence the state of the resource between check and use. This can happen with shared resources such as files, memory, or even variables in multithreaded programs.

CVE-2022-48618 has been classified to as a TOCTTOU vulnerability or weakness.


Products Associated with CVE-2022-48618

You can be notified by stack.watch whenever vulnerabilities like CVE-2022-48618 are published in these products:

Apple iPad OS
 
Apple iOS
 
Apple TV OS
 
Apple Macos
 
Apple Watch OS
 

What versions are vulnerable to CVE-2022-48618?