This article is more than 1 year old
Apple squashes cert-handling bug affecting macOS and iOS
Flaw posed remote code execution risk
Apple has resolved a certification validation vulnerability affecting both macOS and iOS users.
The (CVE-2017-2485) vulnerability posed a remote code execution risk on affected systems, which created a potential mechanism for hackers to craft exploits that pushed malware on to otherwise patched iThings.
The flaw – discovered and responsibly disclosed by security researchers from Cisco Talos – stemmed from bugs in the X.509 certificate validation functionality of Apple macOS and iOS. Improper handling of X.509v3 certificate extensions fields created the code injection risk.
Possible scenarios where the flaw could be exploited include users connecting to a website which serves a malicious certificate to the client, Mail.app connecting to a mail server that provides a malicious certificate, or opening a malicious certificate file to import into the keychain.
More details on the resolved flaw can be found here. ®