CVE-2018-4148

Vulnerability

A buffer overflow vulnerability exists in the Telephony component of Apple iOS prior to version 11.3. The flaw is present in the Intel XMM7360 cellular baseband firmware affecting all recent iPhone devices powered by the Intel XMM solution, starting with iPhone 7 through iOS 11.2.6 [2]. Apple addressed the issue in iOS 11.3 [1][2].

Exploitation

An attacker in a privileged network position, such as within the cellular infrastructure or with the ability to send crafted network messages, can trigger the buffer overflow without any user interaction [2]. The attack exploits a memory corruption vulnerability in the baseband's handling of certain protocol data units, allowing the attacker to overwrite memory regions [2].

Impact

Successful exploitation allows a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on the cellular baseband processor [1]. This could lead to full compromise of the baseband, enabling interception or manipulation of cellular communications, and potentially further compromise of the host device [2]. The attacker gains the ability to execute code with the privileges of the baseband firmware, bypassing iOS security boundaries.

Mitigation

Users should update to iOS 11.3 or later, which was released on March 29, 2018 [1][2]. There is no known workaround for devices that cannot upgrade; those devices remain vulnerable. The issue is not currently listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog.