Apple has released Safari 15.6.1 for macOS Big Sur and Catalina to fix a zero-day vulnerability exploited in the wild to hack Macs.
The zero-day patched today (CVE-2022-32893) is an out-of-bounds write issue in WebKit that could allow a threat actor to execute code remotely on a vulnerable device.
“Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to arbitrary code execution. Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited,” warns Apple in a security bulletin released today.
An out-of-bounds write vulnerability is when an attacker can supply input to a program that causes it to write data past the end or before the beginning of a memory buffer.
This causes the program to crash, corrupt data, or in the worst-case scenario, remote code execution. Apple says they fixed the bug through improved bounds checking.
Apple says the vulnerability was disclosed by a researcher who wishes to remain anonymous.
This zero-day vulnerability is the same one that was patched by Apple yesterday for macOS Monterey and iPhone/iPads.
Apple has not provided details on how the vulnerability is being used in attacks other than saying that it “may have been actively exploited.”
This is the seventh zero-day vulnerability fixed by Apple in 2022, with the previous bugs outlined below: