Detections
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macOS 15.x < 15.5 Multiple Vulnerabilities (122716)

medium Nessus Plugin ID 235718

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Synopsis

The remote host is missing a macOS update that fixes multiple vulnerabilities

Description

The remote host is running a version of macOS / Mac OS X that is 15.x prior to 15.5. It is, therefore, affected by multiple vulnerabilities:

 - A vulnerability was found in OpenSSH when the VerifyHostKeyDNS option is enabled. A machine-in-the-middle attack can be performed by a malicious machine impersonating a legit server. This issue occurs due to how OpenSSH mishandles error codes in specific conditions when verifying the host key. For an attack to be considered successful, the attacker needs to manage to exhaust the client's memory resource first, turning the attack complexity high. (CVE-2025-26465)

 - A stack overflow vulnerability exists in the libexpat library due to the way it handles recursive entity expansion in XML documents. When parsing an XML document with deeply nested entity references, libexpat can be forced to recurse indefinitely, exhausting the stack space and causing a crash. This issue could lead to denial of service (DoS) or, in some cases, exploitable memory corruption, depending on the environment and library usage. (CVE-2024-8176)

 - This issue was addressed with improved handling of floats. This issue is fixed in tvOS 18.4, Safari 18.4, iPadOS 17.7.6, iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4, macOS Sequoia 15.4. A type confusion issue could lead to memory corruption. (CVE-2025-24213)

 - A flaw was found in the OpenSSH package. For each ping packet the SSH server receives, a pong packet is allocated in a memory buffer and stored in a queue of packages. It is only freed when the server/client key exchange has finished. A malicious client may keep sending such packages, leading to an uncontrolled increase in memory consumption on the server side. Consequently, the server may become unavailable, resulting in a denial of service attack. (CVE-2025-26466)

 - A privacy issue was addressed by removing the vulnerable code. This issue is fixed in macOS Ventura 13.7.5, macOS Sequoia 15.4, macOS Sonoma 14.7.5. An app may be able to access user-sensitive data.
 (CVE-2025-30443)

Note that Nessus has not tested for these issues but has instead relied only on the operating system's self-reported version number.

Solution

Upgrade to macOS 15.5 or later.

See Also

https://support.apple.com/en-us/122716

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 235718

File Name: macos_122716.nasl

Version: 1.2

Type: local

Agent: macosx

Published: 5/12/2025

Updated: 5/16/2025

Supported Sensors: Nessus Agent, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: High

Score: 7.7

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.1

Temporal Score: 5.6

Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:H/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:N

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2025-26465

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 6.8

Temporal Score: 6.1

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:P/RL:O/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:apple:macos:15.0, cpe:/o:apple:mac_os_x:15.0

Exploit Available: true

Exploit Ease: Exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 5/12/2025

Vulnerability Publication Date: 12/12/2023

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2024-8176, CVE-2025-24142, CVE-2025-24213, CVE-2025-24222, CVE-2025-24223, CVE-2025-24274, CVE-2025-26465, CVE-2025-26466, CVE-2025-30440, CVE-2025-30443, CVE-2025-31204, CVE-2025-31205, CVE-2025-31206, CVE-2025-31208, CVE-2025-31209, CVE-2025-31212, CVE-2025-31213, CVE-2025-31215, CVE-2025-31217, CVE-2025-31218, CVE-2025-31219, CVE-2025-31220, CVE-2025-31221, CVE-2025-31222, CVE-2025-31223, CVE-2025-31224, CVE-2025-31226, CVE-2025-31232, CVE-2025-31233, CVE-2025-31234, CVE-2025-31235, CVE-2025-31236, CVE-2025-31237, CVE-2025-31238, CVE-2025-31239, CVE-2025-31240, CVE-2025-31241, CVE-2025-31242, CVE-2025-31244, CVE-2025-31245, CVE-2025-31246, CVE-2025-31247, CVE-2025-31249, CVE-2025-31250, CVE-2025-31251, CVE-2025-31256, CVE-2025-31257, CVE-2025-31258, CVE-2025-31259, CVE-2025-31260

APPLE-SA: 122716

IAVA: 2025-A-0326