CVE-2022-42856
HIGHCVE-2022-42856 is a high-severity (CVSS 8.8) CWE-843 vulnerability. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2022-12-14) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2022-12-14. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2023-01-04.
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA (KEV catalog and SSVC triage) for CVE-2022-42856.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2022-42856 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 395,249 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Description
A type confusion issue was addressed with improved state handling. This issue is fixed in Safari 16.2, tvOS 16.2, macOS Ventura 13.1, iOS 15.7.2 and iPadOS 15.7.2, iOS 16.1.2. Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to arbitrary code execution. Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited against versions of iOS released before iOS 15.1..
Affected Products
ipadosappleiphone osapplemacosapplesafariappletvosappleResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Detection & mitigation playbook
VulnerabilityDetect
Identify every host running the affected component and compare the installed build against the fixed version below — for source-built or distro-packaged software the version string, not a lockfile, is the source of truth (`dpkg -l`, `rpm -q`, or the binary's own `--version`).
Remediation status
No fixed release is recorded for CVE-2022-42856 yet. Track the upstream advisory, and apply the exposure-reduction steps below in the meantime.
Mitigate without a patch
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
Red Hat is not aware of any exploitation of this flaw in Linux platforms at this time.
Setting the environment variable JSC_useFTLJIT=0 will disable the vulnerable code. (This will also somewhat slow down JavaScript execution.)Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2022-42856 (CC BY 4.0)
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Extended Lifecycle Support | webkitgtk4-0:2.48.3-2.el7_9 | RHSA-2025:10364 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | webkit2gtk3-0:2.36.7-1.el8_7.1 | RHSA-2023:0016 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | webkit2gtk3-0:2.36.7-1.el9_1.1 | RHSA-2023:0021 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2022-42856 in your dependencies?
Find it across , including transitive dependencies.