CVE-2025-24085 — IPADOS
CRITICALCVE-2025-24085 is a critical-severity (CVSS 10) Use After Free vulnerability in apple ipados. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2025-01-29) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. A fix is available — see the affected versions and patch details below.
A use after free issue was addressed with improved memory management. This issue is fixed in iOS 18.3 and iPadOS 18.3, iPadOS 17.7.6, macOS Sequoia 15.3, macOS Sonoma 14.7.5, macOS…
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2025-01-29. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2025-02-19.
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- 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-2025-24085.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2025-24085 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 394,415 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the 10–50% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Description
A use after free issue was addressed with improved memory management. This issue is fixed in iOS 18.3 and iPadOS 18.3, iPadOS 17.7.6, macOS Sequoia 15.3, macOS Sonoma 14.7.5, macOS Ventura 13.7.5, tvOS 18.3, visionOS 2.3, watchOS 11.3. A malicious application may be able to elevate privileges. Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited against versions of iOS before iOS 17.2.
Affected Products
ipadosappleiphone osapplemacosappletvosapplevisionosapplewatchosappleResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
macOS LaunchDaemon iOS 17.2 - Privilege Escalation
by Mohammed Idrees Banyamer · Jun 5, 2025
Detection & mitigation playbook
Vendor / applianceDetect
Inventory every apple ipados deployment and check each version against the affected-products list above.
Fix
Apply the apple ipados security patch or hotfix for CVE-2025-24085 on the affected version, following the vendor advisory for your exact build.
Workarounds
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. Alongside that, restrict the management interface to trusted networks and apply the vendor's recommended configuration mitigations.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2025-24085 being exploited in your environment?
Detect and block the exploit chain at execution, on systems you cannot patch yet.