Apple released emergency security updates to fix two new zero-day vulnerabilities exploited in attacks targeting iPhone and Mac users, for a total of 13 exploited zero-days patched since the start of the year.

“Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited,” the company revealed in security advisories describing the security flaws.

The bugs were all found in the Image I/O and Wallet frameworks and are tracked as CVE-2023-41064 (discovered by Citizen Lab security researchers) and CVE-2023-41061 (discovered by Apple).

CVE-2023-41064 is a buffer overflow weakness that gets triggered when processing maliciously crafted images, and it can lead to arbitrary code execution on unpatched devices.

CVE-2023-41061 is a validation issue that can be exploited using a malicious attachment to also gain arbitrary code execution on targeted devices.

Apple fixed the zero-days in macOS Ventura 13.5.2, iOS 16.6.1, iPadOS 16.6.1, and watchOS 9.6.2 with improved logic and memory handling.

The list of impacted devices is rather extensive, seeing that the two security bugs affect both older and newer models, and it includes:

• iPhone 8 and later
• iPad Pro (all models), iPad Air 3rd generation and later, iPad 5th generation and later, and iPad mini 5th generation and later
• Macs running macOS Ventura
• Apple Watch Series 4 and later

13 exploited zero-days fixed this year

Since the start of the year, Apple has patched 13 zero-day bugs exploited in attacks against devices running iOS, macOS, iPadOS, and watchOS.

While Apple has yet to disclose details regarding attacks exploiting the flaws patched today, it acknowledged that CVE-2023-41064 was found and reported by Citizen Labs, whose researchers have previously shared information on other Apple zero-days exploited to deploy commercial spyware on computers and iPhones in targeted attacks.

Two months ago, in July, Apple pushed out-of-band Rapid Security Response (RSR) updates to address a vulnerability (CVE-2023-37450) impacting fully patched iPhones, Macs, and iPads.

It later confirmed that the RSR updates partially broke web browsing on patched devices and released new and fixed versions of the buggy patches two days later.

Before today, Apple also addressed: