Apple has released security updates for iOS and iPadOS designed to fix three dangerous vulnerabilities that may have been exploited in the real-world attacks.
The three zero days are CVE-2021-1782, CVE-2021-1870, and CVE-2021-1871. The first flaw affects the iOS operating system kernel. It exists due to a race condition in the Kernel component. A remote attacker can use a malicious application and escalate privileges on the system.
The other two flaws (CVE-2021-1871, CVE-2021-1870) impact the WebKit component and are described as a logic issue that allows a remote attacker to execute code by tricking a user into visiting a malicious website.
The above vulnerabilities affect Apple iOS versions 14.0, 14.1, 14.2, 14.3, and iPadOS v14.0, 14.1, 14.2, 14.3. The issues were addressed in iOS 14.4 and iPadOS 14.4. Apple did not provide additional details on how widespread the attack was, or who might have been behind it.
In November last year, the iPhone maker patched three actively exploited vulnerabilities in iOS (CVE-2020-27930, CVE-2020-27950, CVE-2020-27932). In December, Citizen Lab reported that a zero day bug in iOS was used to target Al Jazeera journalists.