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Mallory
HighPublic exploit

Process memory corruption in Apple ImageIO image parsing

IdentifiersCVE-2026-28990CWE-119· Improper Restriction of Operations…

CVE-2026-28990 is a memory-handling vulnerability in Apple ImageIO. According to Apple's advisory, processing a maliciously crafted image may corrupt process memory. The issue was addressed with improved memory handling. The available context ties the flaw specifically to ImageIO across multiple Apple platforms, but does not disclose the exact vulnerable function, image format, or root-cause subtype beyond memory-handling leading to memory corruption.

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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 may corrupt the memory of the process that parses the attacker-controlled image. Based on the vendor description, this can plausibly result in application instability or termination, and memory corruption conditions may create a path toward further exploitation, but the provided information does not confirm code execution.

Mitigation

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

Until patched, reduce exposure to untrusted image content, especially images received from external or untrusted sources and any workflows that automatically parse or preview images via affected Apple platforms. Limiting automatic processing of untrusted images may reduce exploitability, but no complete vendor mitigation is provided in the available information.

Remediation

Patch, then assume compromise.

Apply the vendor fixes provided by Apple. The issue is fixed in iOS 26.5 and iPadOS 26.5, macOS Sequoia 15.7.7, macOS Sonoma 14.8.7, macOS Tahoe 26.5, tvOS 26.5, visionOS 26.5, and watchOS 26.5.
PUBLIC EXPLOITS

Exploits

1 valid exploit after Mallory filtered fakes, detection scripts, and README-only repos.

VALID 1 / 1 TOTALView more in app
exr-imageio-pocMaturityPoCVerified exploit

This repository is a small proof-of-concept for CVE-2026-28990, an integer overflow in Apple's ImageIO EXR decoder (EXRReadPlugin::decodeBlockAppleEXR). It contains two code files and one README. The Python script gen_exr_trigger.py is the exploit generator: it constructs a malformed OpenEXR file by setting a large dataWindow (16384 x 65536), building a valid-looking EXR header and channel list, creating a scanline offset table where every scanline points to the same pixel block, and appending a single oversized scanline payload filled with 0x41 bytes. The intended effect is to make the vulnerable decoder compute a wrapped buffer size, allocate too little memory, then overflow the heap when consuming the supplied pixel data. The Objective-C file exr_parser.m is a local harness rather than the vulnerability itself. It loads an image file from a user-provided path using NSData dataWithContentsOfFile, creates a CGImageSource via ImageIO, decodes the first image, then draws it into a bitmap context using CoreGraphics. This forces the vulnerable parsing/rendering path and demonstrates the crash. It prints width/height and disables acceleration via CGRenderingStateSetAllowsAcceleration before drawing, likely to make behavior more deterministic during testing. There are no network callbacks, C2 features, or remote delivery mechanisms in the code. The attack vector is a malicious file processed locally or by any application using the vulnerable ImageIO EXR parsing path. The repository is clearly a PoC and not weaponized: it demonstrates crash-capable heap corruption via a crafted file, but does not include code execution primitives, shell payloads, persistence, or automation beyond file generation and local parsing.

Billy-EllisDisclosed May 25, 2026objective-cpythonfilelocal
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

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Threat actor evidence

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Associated malware

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Detection signatures

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Vendor-by-vendor mapping

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

Social activity7

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