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A zero-day Apple bug exploited by cybercriminals to hack iPhone and Mac with iOS and macOS old versions was patched by the company as it released security updates against it.

Zero-Day Apple Bug: Behavior

The zero-day we are talking about was dubbed CVE-2021-30869 being announced by 2 researchers from the Google Threat Analysis Group, by their names Clément Lecigne and Erye Hernandez together with the expert from Google Project Zero, Ian Beer.

The zero-day Apple bug was identified in the XNU operating system kernel which is basically the operating system nucleus. If hackers would have successfully taken advantage of this exploit, it could result in arbitrary code execution using kernel privileges.

The Threat Posed by Zero-Days to IoS and macOS This Year

It seems that IoS and macOS devices have been impacted by ceaseless zero-day bugs lately.

According to BleepingComputer, here’s an overview of the zero-days this year:

What Is a Zero-Day Bug?

Now it’s interesting to understand what is a zero-day bug. As described in our article about zero-day attacks, a zero-day vulnerability stands for a flaw in the software, recently identified and unpatched. Generally, hackers find this kind of bug and start exploiting it before security researchers become aware of its threat. But there are also cases when experts discover it and do not announce it until patched.

The zero-day attack is what comes next after hackers find about the vulnerability and start exploiting it.

Impacted Devices

In the case of CVE-2021-30869 in the discussion, the impacted devices were iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPad Air, iPad mini 2, iPad mini 3, and iPod touch (6th generation) running iOS 12.5.5 and macOS Catalina Macs.

How to Update Your Apple Device?

Here’s how to implement the latest updates from Apple:

To update iPhone

Go to the Settings menu, then click on General and choose Software Update.

For macOS software downloading

Go to the Apple icon, choose System Preferences, and then Software Update.

It’s worth mentioning that Apple devices can automatically update if toggling on automatic updates.

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Andra Andrioaie

Security Enthusiast

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Hi! My name is Andra and I am a passionate writer interested in a variety of topics. I am curious about the cybersecurity world and what I want to achieve through what I write is to keep you curious too!

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