Skip to main content
Live Webinar with SANS (June 25)— Agentic CTI Automation for Fun & ProfitRegister Free
Mallory
Medium

Installed App Enumeration in Apple libxpc

IdentifiersCVE-2026-28882CWE-200

CVE-2026-28882 is a privacy issue in Apple libxpc that allowed a local app to enumerate a user's installed applications. Apple states the issue was addressed with improved checks. The vulnerability affected multiple Apple platforms, including iOS/iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, visionOS, and watchOS, and was fixed in iOS 18.7.9 and iPadOS 18.7.9, iOS 26.4 and iPadOS 26.4, macOS Tahoe 26.4, tvOS 26.4, visionOS 26.4, and watchOS 26.4. No vulnerable function or lower-level root cause beyond insufficient checks in libxpc is provided in the available content.

Share:
For your environment

Are you exposed to this one?

Mallory correlates every CVE against your assets, your vendors, and active adversary campaigns. Know which vulnerabilities matter for you, not just which ones are loud.

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 discover which apps are installed on the device. This exposes user environment and behavioral metadata that can be used for fingerprinting, profiling, inference of sensitive interests or activities, and potentially to tailor follow-on attacks based on the presence of specific applications.

Mitigation

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

Until patched, limit installation and execution of untrusted or unnecessary applications, especially on affected Apple platforms, because exploitation requires a local app context. Enterprise controls such as application allowlisting, MDM-enforced software restrictions, and minimizing third-party app exposure can reduce risk. No vendor-provided workaround beyond installing the security updates is available in the provided content.

Remediation

Patch, then assume compromise.

Apply the vendor fixes released by Apple. Apple states the issue is fixed in iOS 18.7.9 and iPadOS 18.7.9, iOS 26.4 and iPadOS 26.4, macOS Tahoe 26.4, tvOS 26.4, visionOS 26.4, and watchOS 26.4.
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
AppleIosoperating_system
AppleIpadosoperating_system
AppleIphone Osoperating_system
AppleMacosoperating_system
AppleMacos Tahoeoperating_system
AppleTvosoperating_system
AppleVisionosoperating_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 activity7

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