CVE-2025-43224

CVE-2025-43224 describes an out-of-bounds access vulnerability in Apple's media file parsing routines. The root cause is a lack of sufficient bounds checking, which an attacker can trigger by crafting a malicious media file. Apple addressed the issue with improved bounds validation across multiple operating systems.

Exploitation requires convincing a user to process a specially crafted media file, such as a video or audio clip. No additional privileges are needed beyond normal user access. The attack surface is broad, as media files are commonly opened by various applications on affected devices.

The impact of successful exploitation includes unexpected application termination (denial of service) or corruption of process memory, which could potentially lead to arbitrary code execution depending on the memory layout. Apple rates the severity as High with a CVSS v3 score of 7.1.

Apple released patches on July 29, 2025 for iOS 18.6, iPadOS 18.6, macOS Sequoia 15.6, tvOS 18.6, and visionOS 2.6 [1][2][3][4]. Users are advised to update their devices to the latest available versions to mitigate this vulnerability.