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Mallory
Medium

Unauthorized Bluetooth Access in Apple OSes

IdentifiersCVE-2024-44191CWE-863

CVE-2024-44191 is an authorization/state-management flaw in Apple platforms whereby an application may gain unauthorized access to Bluetooth. Apple states the issue was addressed through improved state management. The vulnerability affects multiple Apple operating systems, including iOS prior to 17.7/18, iPadOS prior to 17.7/18, macOS prior to Sequoia 15, watchOS prior to 11, visionOS prior to 2, tvOS prior to 18, and Xcode prior to 16. The available advisory does not identify the specific vulnerable function or framework entry point, but the described behavior indicates improper enforcement of Bluetooth authorization due to flawed internal state handling.

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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 local application to access Bluetooth functionality without proper authorization. Depending on the app’s capabilities and the platform context, this could undermine user privacy and platform permission boundaries by permitting Bluetooth interactions that should have required explicit authorization or been denied. The published information does not provide evidence of code execution or privilege escalation beyond unauthorized Bluetooth access.

Mitigation

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

If immediate patching is not possible, reduce exposure by limiting installation and execution of untrusted or unnecessary applications, enforcing application allowlisting/MDM controls where available, and restricting Bluetooth use on sensitive devices until updates can be applied. Because the issue is in platform authorization/state handling, no complete mitigation short of vendor patching is documented in the provided content.

Remediation

Patch, then assume compromise.

Apply the vendor fixes provided by Apple. Apple states the issue is fixed in iOS 17.7, iPadOS 17.7, Xcode 16, visionOS 2, watchOS 11, macOS Sequoia 15, iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and tvOS 18. Systems running earlier affected versions should be upgraded to the corresponding fixed release.
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
AppleVisionosoperating_system
AppleWatchosoperating_system
AppleXcodeapplication

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

What this page doesn’t show

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Exposure mapping

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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.