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Mallory
CriticalCISA KEVExploited in the wildPublic exploit

Apple CoreMedia Use-After-Free Privilege Escalation

IdentifiersCVE-2025-24085CWE-416· Use After Free

CVE-2025-24085 is a use-after-free vulnerability in Apple CoreMedia/Core Media. Apple states the issue was addressed with improved memory management and that a malicious application may be able to elevate privileges. The flaw affects Apple platforms prior to the fixes released in visionOS 2.3, iOS 18.3 and iPadOS 18.3, macOS Sequoia 15.3, watchOS 11.3, and tvOS 18.3. Apple also reported awareness of a case in which the vulnerability may have been actively exploited against versions of iOS before iOS 17.2. Based on the provided content, the specific vulnerable function or code path is not identified.

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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 allow a malicious local application to elevate privileges on the affected Apple device. This can undermine platform security boundaries and potentially provide higher-privileged execution than intended. Apple has indicated the issue may have been exploited in the wild against older iOS versions, which increases confidence that the flaw is practically exploitable under some conditions.

Mitigation

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

If immediate patching is not possible, reduce the ability to run untrusted or unnecessary applications on affected devices, enforce application control and MDM restrictions where available, and limit installation of software to trusted sources only. Because exploitation requires a malicious application according to Apple's description, minimizing local app execution opportunities is the primary interim mitigation. There is no vendor-provided workaround in the supplied content that fully eliminates the vulnerability short of updating.

Remediation

Patch, then assume compromise.

Apply Apple's security updates that fix CVE-2025-24085: visionOS 2.3, iOS 18.3, iPadOS 18.3, macOS Sequoia 15.3, watchOS 11.3, and tvOS 18.3 or later. Where applicable, also install subsequent platform updates that include the fix. Prioritize patching devices running iOS versions earlier than 17.2 given Apple's statement about possible in-the-wild exploitation.
PUBLIC EXPLOITS

Exploits

No valid public exploits. Mallory filtered out 2 candidates as fakes, detection scripts, or README-only repos.

VALID 0 / 2 TOTALView more in app

All candidate exploits were filtered out by Mallory's validation.

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

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 signatures2

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 activity34

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