CVE-2023-42917
HIGHCVE-2023-42917 is a high-severity (CVSS 8.8) Out-of-bounds Write vulnerability. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2023-12-04) — 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 2023-12-04. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2023-12-25.
- 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-2023-42917.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2023-42917 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 memory corruption vulnerability was addressed with improved locking. This issue is fixed in iOS 17.1.2 and iPadOS 17.1.2, macOS Sonoma 14.1.2, Safari 17.1.2. Processing web content may lead to arbitrary code execution. Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been exploited against versions of iOS before iOS 16.7.1.
Affected Products
ipadosappleiphone osapplemacosapplesafariappledebian linuxdebianfedorafedoraprojectResearch 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-2023-42917 yet. Track the upstream advisory, and apply the exposure-reduction steps below in the meantime.
Mitigate without a patch
Constrain what reaches the vulnerable code: limit the size and shape of untrusted input, isolate the affected component in a sandboxed or least-privileged process, and enable the platform's memory-safety mitigations (ASLR, stack protector, hardened allocator) so an out-of-bounds access is more likely to fail closed than to be exploitable.
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.
All versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux are affected to this vulnerability. To exploit this flaw, an attacker needs to trick a user into processing or loading malicious web content. For this reason, this flaw was rated with an important, and not critical, severity.
Do not process or load untrusted web content with WebKitGTK. In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, the following packages require WebKitGTK4: evolution-data-server, glade, gnome-boxes, gnome-initial-setup, gnome-online-accounts, gnome-shell, shotwell, sushi and yelp. This vulnerability can only be exploited when these packages are installed in the system and being used via a graphical interface to process untrusted web content, via GNOME for example. In gnome-shell, the vulnerability can be exploited by an attacker from the local network without user interaction. To mitigate this vulnerability, consider removing these packages. Note that some of these packages are required by GNOME, removing them…Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2023-42917 (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 | webkit2gtk3-0:2.40.5-1.el8_9.1 | RHSA-2023:7716 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | webkit2gtk3-0:2.42.5-1.el8 | RHSA-2024:2982 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2 Advanced Update Support | webkit2gtk3-0:2.46.3-1.el8_2 | RHSA-2024:9680 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.4 Advanced Mission Critical Update Support | webkit2gtk3-0:2.46.3-1.el8_4 | RHSA-2024:9679 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.6 Advanced Mission Critical Update Support | webkit2gtk3-0:2.46.3-1.el8_6 | RHSA-2024:9653 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.8 Extended Update Support | webkit2gtk3-0:2.46.3-1.el8_8 | RHSA-2024:9646 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | webkit2gtk3-0:2.40.5-1.el9_3.1 | RHSA-2023:7715 |
Frequently Asked Questions
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