Apple fixes two actively exploited vulnerabilities in the latest iOS update. This gives users an additional reason to update to iOS 17.

Apple released an update for iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 last night, the first minor security update since the release of the new version. Although this is an update with no new features, Apple recommends updating quickly. In particular, those still using iOS 16 are urged to update their device to iOS 17. You get the new features for free.

The update closes a zero-day that Apple says is being actively exploited and can affect all iOS versions up to and including 16.6. CVE-2023-42824 allows an intruder to gain privileges to manipulate the operating system kernel. If this person has malicious intentions, you can imagine that this could have serious consequences for your device.

Another vulnerability being fixed is CVE-2023-5217, which can flood your memory with bad code. This vulnerability affects all programs, mainly browsers, that use the open source library libvpx for video encoding. Google and Microsoft have also rolled out updates for Chrome and Edge.

Seventeen times

Apple considered the vulnerability to be urgent enough to immediately roll out an update. This has been Apple’s policy for security updates since this year. Instead of rolling out a monthly update that fixes all previously discovered vulnerabilities, Apple now rolls out patches as soon as they are developed.

In this way, Apple gives hackers as little time as possible to exploit zero-days in its software. This is now the seventeenth time that Apple has rolled out such an “emergency update” in 2023.