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Mallory
High

Denial-of-Service via Malicious Certificate in Apple OSes

IdentifiersCVE-2023-23524CWE-20

CVE-2023-23524 is a denial-of-service vulnerability in Apple operating systems (tvOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, macOS Ventura) where processing a maliciously crafted certificate can trigger a denial-of-service condition. The root cause is insufficient input validation when handling certificates, which could allow an attacker to crash the affected device or service by supplying a specially crafted certificate.

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For your environment

Are you exposed to this one?

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ANALYST BRIEF

Impact, mitigation & remediation

What it means. What to do now. Patch path, mitigations, and the assume-compromise checklist.

Impact

What an attacker gets, and what they’ve been doing with it.

Successful exploitation allows a remote attacker to cause a denial-of-service on the target device or service by sending a malicious certificate, potentially leading to application or system crashes. There is no indication of code execution or data compromise.

Mitigation

If you can’t patch tonight, do this now.

If immediate patching is not possible, restrict the acceptance of untrusted certificates and limit exposure to certificate processing from untrusted sources until the affected systems can be updated.

Remediation

Patch, then assume compromise.

Upgrade to tvOS 16.3.2, iOS 16.3.1, iPadOS 16.3.1, watchOS 9.3.1, or macOS Ventura 13.2.1, where the input validation issue has been addressed and the vulnerability is fixed.
PUBLIC EXPLOITS

Exploits

No public exploits tracked yet. Mallory keeps watching.

VALID 0 / 0 TOTALView more in app

No public exploit code observed for this vulnerability.

EXPOSURE SURFACE

Affected products & vendors

Products and vendors Mallory has correlated with this vulnerability. Open in Mallory to drill down to specific CPE configurations and version ranges.

VendorProductType
AppleIpadosoperating_system
AppleIphone Osoperating_system
AppleMacosoperating_system
AppleTvosoperating_system
AppleWatchosoperating_system

Vendor-confirmed product mapping. Mallory continuously reconciles this list against your asset inventory.

What this page doesn’t show

The version that knows your environment.

This page is what’s public. Mallory adds the parts that aren’t: which of your assets are affected, which adversaries are exploiting it right now, which detections to deploy, and what to do tonight.
Exposure mapping

Query your assets running an affected version, and investigate the blast radius.

Threat actor evidence

Every observed campaign linking this CVE to a named adversary.

Associated malware

Malware families riding this exploit, with evidence and IOCs.

Detection signatures

YARA, Sigma, Snort, and vendor rules, auto-deployed to your SIEM.

Vendor-by-vendor mapping

Cross-references every affected SKU, including bundled OEM variants.

Social activity

Community discussion across Reddit, Mastodon, and other social sources.