CVE-2025-43529
HIGHCVE-2025-43529 is a high-severity (CVSS 8.8) Use After Free vulnerability. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2025-12-15) — 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 2025-12-15. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2026-01-05.
- 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-2025-43529.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2025-43529 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 394,803 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% 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 watchOS 26.2, Safari 26.2, iOS 18.7.3 and iPadOS 18.7.3, iOS 26.2 and iPadOS 26.2, macOS Tahoe 26.2, visionOS 26.2, tvOS 26.2. Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to arbitrary code execution. Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been exploited in an extremely sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals on versions of iOS before iOS 26. CVE-2025-14174 was also issued in response to this report.
Affected Products
ipadosappleiphone osapplemacosapplesafariappletvosapplevisionosappleResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
0xjohnnydev/WebKit-UAF-ANGLE-OOB-Analysis
Analysis of CVE-2025-43529 (WebKit UAF) + CVE-2025-14174 (ANGLE OOB) exp
jir4vv1t/CVE-2025-43529
exploit for cve-2025-43529
GenericCoding/pois0nSword
A demonstration of read write using cve-2025-43529 and userland PAC bypa
bjrjk/CVE-2025-43529
Root Cause Analysis for CVE-2025-43529, a UAF vulnerability due to incor
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-2025-43529 yet. Track the upstream advisory, and apply the exposure-reduction steps below in the meantime.
Mitigate without a patch
Stop feeding it untrusted input: reject or quarantine files and payloads from unverified sources until you can upgrade, restrict accepted formats to the ones you actually need, and run the parsing or decoding step in a least-privileged sandbox or short-lived worker so a crash or corrupted read cannot reach the rest of the process.
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.
This vulnerability is rated IMPORTANT for Red Hat products. A use-after-free flaw in webkitgtk, when processing maliciously crafted web content, can lead to remote code execution. Successful exploitation requires user interaction, where a victim must visit a malicious website. WebKitGTK3 is not required by any…
To mitigate this issue, avoid processing untrusted web content. Additionally, disabling the JavaScript JIT compiler can reduce the attack surface. For applications using WebKitGTK, set the environment variable `JavaScriptCoreUseJIT=0` before launching the application. This may impact performance for JavaScript-heavy web content.Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2025-43529 (CC BY 4.0)
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Extended Lifecycle Support | webkitgtk4-0:2.50.4-2.el7_9 | RHSA-2025:23975 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | webkit2gtk3-0:2.50.4-1.el8_10 | RHSA-2025:23663 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2 Advanced Update Support | webkit2gtk3-0:2.50.4-1.el8_2 | RHSA-2025:23969 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.4 Advanced Mission Critical Update Support | webkit2gtk3-0:2.50.4-1.el8_4 | RHSA-2025:23967 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.6 Advanced Mission Critical Update Support | webkit2gtk3-0:2.50.4-1.el8_6 | RHSA-2025:23968 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.8 Telecommunications Update Service | webkit2gtk3-0:2.50.4-1.el8_8 | RHSA-2025:23973 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | webkit2gtk3-0:2.50.4-1.el9_7 | RHSA-2025:23700 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.0 Update Services for SAP Solutions | webkit2gtk3-0:2.50.4-1.el9_0 | RHSA-2025:23970 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2025-43529 in your dependencies?
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