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CISA KEV · ACTIVELY EXPLOITED
MEDIUM severity

CVE-2023-38606 — IPADOS

MEDIUM

CVE-2023-38606 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.5) vulnerability in apple ipados. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2023-07-26) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. A fix is available — see the affected versions and patch details below.

This issue was addressed with improved state management. This issue is fixed in macOS Monterey 12.6.8, iOS 15.7.8 and iPadOS 15.7.8, iOS 16.6 and iPadOS 16.6, tvOS 16.6, macOS Big Sur…

Published
Updated
Affected
5 products
Patched
See advisory
Exploits
3 known
Exploitation data as of Oct 23, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, CISA KEV, FIRST.org (EPSS)

Exploitation Status

Actively exploited in the wild

  • Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2023-07-26. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2023-08-16.

Exploitation and automatability from CISA (KEV catalog and SSVC triage) for CVE-2023-38606.

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗
2.9%probability of exploitation in next 30 days
Lower Risk+1.90%
Lower risk than most CVEs87th percentile — riskier than 87% of all scored CVEsHighest risk
0.00%1.25%2.49%3.74%0.1%0.1%1.0%2.9%May 26Jul 26Oct 26

Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.

How urgent is this, really

CVE-2023-38606 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

This issue was addressed with improved state management. This issue is fixed in macOS Monterey 12.6.8, iOS 15.7.8 and iPadOS 15.7.8, iOS 16.6 and iPadOS 16.6, tvOS 16.6, macOS Big Sur 11.7.9, macOS Ventura 13.5, watchOS 9.6. An app may be able to modify sensitive kernel state. Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited against versions of iOS released before iOS 15.7.1.

Affected Products

5 products · 9 configurations
OS
ipadosapple
≥ 16.0 && < 16.6
range
OS
iphone osapple
≥ 16.0 && < 16.6
range
OS
macosapple
≥ 13.0 && < 13.5
range
OS
tvosapple
< 16.6
range
OS
watchosapple
< 9.6
range
Exploits & PoCs
3

Research use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.

This issue was addressed with improved state management. This issue is f…

support.apple.comGoogle-sheetJul 2023

This issue was addressed with improved state management. This issue is f…

cisa.govCISAJul 2023

This issue was addressed with improved state management. This issue is f…

nvd.nist.govNVDJul 2023

Detection & mitigation playbook

Vendor / appliance

  1. Detect

    Inventory every apple ipados deployment and check each version against the affected-products list above.

  2. Fix

    Apply the apple ipados security patch or hotfix for CVE-2023-38606 on the affected version, following the vendor advisory for your exact build.

  3. Workarounds

    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. Alongside that, restrict the management interface to trusted networks and apply the vendor's recommended configuration mitigations.

Frequently Asked Questions

This issue was addressed with improved state management. This issue is fixed in macOS Monterey 12.6.8, iOS 15.7.8 and iPadOS 15.7.8, iOS 16.6 and iPadOS 16.6, tvOS 16.6, macOS Big Sur 11.7.9, macOS Ventura 13.5, watchOS 9.6. An app may be able to modify sensitive kernel state. Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited against versions of iOS released before iOS 15.7.1.
O3 Security · Runtime Protection

Is CVE-2023-38606 being exploited in your environment?

Detect and block the exploit chain at execution, on systems you cannot patch yet.

Protect my workloads How runtime protection works
Actively Exploited: CVE-2023-38606: IPADOS (Medium 5.5)