CVE-2025-43401

7.5

Apple · macOS

A denial-of-service vulnerability in Apple macOS allows remote, unauthenticated attackers to disrupt system availability via improved validation failures.

Executive summary

A remote, unauthenticated denial-of-service vulnerability exists in multiple versions of Apple macOS, posing a significant risk to system availability.

Vulnerability

This is a denial-of-service flaw caused by insufficient input validation, which can be exploited by an unauthenticated remote attacker to crash the affected system.

Business impact

The vulnerability carries a CVSS score of 7.5, indicating a high severity risk that could lead to significant operational disruption. Successful exploitation allows an attacker to render systems unavailable, potentially halting critical business processes, impacting user productivity, and necessitating emergency recovery procedures.

Remediation

Immediate Action: Update all affected macOS installations to the patched versions (macOS Sequoia 15.7.2, macOS Sonoma 14.8.2, or macOS Tahoe 26.1) as provided in the Apple security advisory.

Proactive Monitoring: Review system logs for signs of abnormal resource exhaustion or unexpected service termination patterns that may indicate an ongoing denial-of-service attempt.

Compensating Controls: Ensure perimeter network security devices are configured to drop suspicious traffic and employ rate-limiting to mitigate potential network-based flood attacks.

Exploitation status

Public Exploit Available: No (exploit_available: false)

Analyst recommendation

Given the ease of exploitation for this denial-of-service vulnerability, organizations should prioritize patching as a standard maintenance task. Administrators must ensure all macOS endpoints are updated to the specified versions to eliminate the risk of service disruption from remote attackers.

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Sources