Apple Patches CVE-2025-43300 Zero-Day in iOS iPadOS and macOS Apple has released security updates to address a security flaw impacting iOS, iPadOS, and macOS that it said has come under active exploitation in the wild.
The zero-day out-of-bounds write vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-43300 (CVSS score: 8.8), resides in the ImageIO framework and could result in memory corruption when processing a malicious image.
“Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been exploited in an extremely sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals,” the company said in an advisory.
The iPhone maker said the bug was internally discovered and that it was addressed with improved bounds checking. The following versions address the security defect.
Table of Contents
All Apple users should update after company patches zero-day vulnerability in all platforms.
iOS 18.6.2 and iPadOS 18.6.2 (iPhone XS and later, iPad Pro 13-inch, iPad Pro 12.9-inch 3rd generation and later, iPad Pro 11-inch 1st generation and later, iPad Air 3rd generation and later, iPad 7th generation and later, and iPad mini 5th generation and later.
iPadOS 17.7.10 (iPad Pro 12.9-inch 2nd generation, iPad Pro 10.5-inch, and iPad 6th generation);
• macOS Sequoia 15.6.1.
• macOS Sonoma 14.7.8; and
• macOS Ventura 13.7.8.
What starts as a highly targeted campaign often trickles down into mass exploitation against everyday users.
Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been exploited in an extremely sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals,” the company said in an advisory.
The iPhone maker said the bug was internally discovered and that it was addressed with improved bounds checking. The following versions address the security defect –
• iPadOS 17.7.10 – iPad Pro 12.9-inch 2nd generation, iPad Pro 10.5-inch, and iPad 6th generation
• macOS Ventura 13.7.8 – Macs running macOS Ventura
• macOS Sonoma 14.7.8 – Macs running macOS Sonoma
Last month, the company also issued patches for a Safari vulnerability residing in an open-source component (CVE-2025-6558) that Google reported as having been exploited as a zero-day in the Chrome web browser.
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Apple Patches Security After ‘Extremely Sophisticated’ Cyberattack
Apple has reportedly patched a zero-day flaw in its ImageIO framework.
That’s according to a report Friday (Aug. 22) by Dark Reading, which noted this is the latest in a string of zero-day vulnerabilities the company has disclosed this year.
Zero-day vulnerabilities—unknown security flaws in software or hardware—are in many cases spotted first by hackers, quietly exploited and revealed only after the damage is done.
In this case, the report said, Apple was faced with an out-of-bounds write issue which was used in “extremely sophisticated” targeted attacks.
“Processing a malicious image file may result in memory corruption,” the tech giant’s security advisory said. “Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been exploited in an extremely sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals.”
Apple said the vulnerability was found by employees and affects iOS, iPadOS and macOS, and it has been addressed with improved bounds checking in the most up-to-date versions of these operating systems.
Dark Reading noted that Apple typically does not offer further technical details of the vulnerability or insights into the exploitation other than to characterize the cyberattacks as sophisticated. The company began using such terminology in some advisories this year, the report said, presumably to denote nation-state threats and spyware activity.
How to update your iPhone or iPad?
For iOS and iPadOS users, you can check if you’re using the latest software version, go to Settings > General > Software Update. You can do that on the same screen.
How to update your Mac?
Apple stepped in and tightened the rules with better bounds checking, closing off the hole so attackers can no longer use it.
An out-of-bounds write vulnerability means that the attacker can manipulate parts of the device’s memory that should be out of their reach. Such a flaw in a program allows it to read or write outside the bounds the program sets, enabling attackers to manipulate other parts of the memory allocated to more critical functions. Attackers can write code to a part of the memory where the system executes it with permissions that the program and user should not have.
In this case, an attacker could construct an image to exploit the vulnerability. Processing such a malicious image file would result in memory corruption. Memory corruption issues can be manipulated to crash a process or run attacker’s code.