CVE-2025-52573 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6) OS Command Injection vulnerability in ios-simulator-mcp. A fix is available for ios-simulator-mcp — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Command Injection in MCP Server ios-simulator-mcp
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2025-52573.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2025-52573 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 377,333 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
How broadly this vulnerability is actually deployed: weekly install volume shows current usage, and reverse-dependency count shows how many other packages break if it stays unpatched.
ios-simulator-mcpnpmDescription
iOS Simulator MCP Server (ios-simulator-mcp) is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for interacting with iOS simulators. Versions prior to 1.3.3 are written in a way that is vulnerable to command injection vulnerability attacks as part of some of its MCP Server tool definition and implementation. The MCP Server exposes the tool ui_tap which relies on Node.js child process API exec which is an unsafe and vulnerable API if concatenated with untrusted user input. LLM exposed user input for duration, udid, and x and y args can be replaced with shell meta-characters like ; or && or others to change the behavior from running the expected command idb to another command. When LLMs are tricked through prompt injection (and other techniques and attack vectors) to call the tool with input that uses special shell characters such as ; rm -rf /tmp;# and other payload variations, the full command-line text will be interepted by the shell and result in other commands except of ps executing on the host running the MCP Server. Version 1.3.3 contains a patch for the issue.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | ios-simulator-mcp | all versions | 1.3.3npm install ios-simulator-mcp@1.3.3 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for ios-simulator-mcp, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update ios-simulator-mcp to 1.3.3 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2025-52573 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
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.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2025-52573 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2025-52573. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2025-52573 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2025-52573 across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.