Apple Fixes Critical macOS Vulnerability April Security Update
Apple has released an urgent security patch to address a critical vulnerability (CVE-2025-24280) affecting macOS Sequoia and macOS Sonoma. This kernel-level flaw, disclosed on April 3, 2025, impacts systems running macOS Sequoia versions prior to 15.4 and macOS Sonoma versions prior to 14.7.5. The vulnerability allows potentially malicious applications to access parts of the kernel memory that should remain protected, risking exposure of sensitive data such as cryptographic keys, login credentials, and system configuration information.
Although there are no confirmed instances of active exploitation at the time of writing, Apple has acknowledged the severity of the issue and strongly recommends all users—particularly those in sensitive industries such as finance, legal, healthcare, and defense—apply the available updates immediately.
Technical Description
The vulnerability CVE-2025-24280 is a kernel memory disclosure vulnerability in the macOS operating system. It stems from how the kernel responds to certain Input/Output (I/O) operations. When these system-level processes are not thoroughly validated and sanitized before being returned to user-level applications, they can unintentionally expose contents of memory that reside in the kernel space.
In particular, the flaw lies in how macOS interacts with IOKit a framework responsible for managing communication between the operating system and hardware components. A malicious application, even if sandboxed, could exploit this flaw by issuing carefully crafted I/O requests via IOKit. These requests manipulate low-level kernel behavior, allowing the app to read residual memory that may include sensitive data.
While this vulnerability does not directly offer full system takeover or remote code execution, it can serve as a foundational piece for larger attack chains. An attacker who gains access to leaked kernel memory can potentially map out memory layouts, disable security features like System Integrity Protection (SIP), or pair it with other exploits to escalate privileges and persist undetected.
This type of vulnerability underscores the importance of strong memory management in modern operating systems, especially in ecosystems like Apple’s, which rely heavily on isolation and hardware-enforced protections to safeguard user data.
Impact
The impact of CVE-2025-24280 extends across all user environments, but is particularly dangerous in enterprise, government, and critical infrastructure sectors. Attackers with local access can use this vulnerability as a gateway to compromise system confidentiality and lay the groundwork for privilege escalation or even lateral movement in a network.
If exploited, threat actors could extract critical system data, observe the structure of protected memory regions, and identify opportunities to bypass additional security layers. While exploitation requires local access or execution of a malicious app, the relatively low complexity of the attack makes it an appealing choice for advanced threat actors and malware authors.
Affected systems include:
- macOS Sequoia versions prior to 15.4
- macOS Sonoma versions prior to 14.7.5
IOC and Context Details
| Topics | Details |
|---|---|
| Tactic Name | Defense Evasion, Privilege Escalation |
| Technique Name | Exploitation for Privilege Escalation |
| Sub Technique Name | Kernel Memory Disclosure |
| Attack Type | Local Exploit / Memory Disclosure |
| Targeted Applications | macOS Kernel (Sequoia and Sonoma) |
| Region Impacted | Global |
| Industry Impacted | All |
| IOC’s | NA |
| CVE | CVE-2025-24280 |
Recommended Actions
- Update Immediately: All users should upgrade to macOS Sequoia 15.4 or macOS Sonoma 14.7.5 to patch the vulnerability.
- Audit Installed Applications: Verify app permissions and remove any untrusted software that may attempt to interact with system-level resources.
- Monitor System Logs: Use macOS’s built-in security features and third-party EDR tools to detect suspicious IOKit activity or memory access patterns.
- Apply Application Sandboxing: Limit what apps can access through sandbox rules to prevent them from probing memory or hardware.