Description

A race condition was addressed with improved state handling. This issue is fixed in iOS 26.7 and iPadOS 26.7, iOS 27 and iPadOS 27, macOS Golden Gate 27, macOS Sequoia 15.8, macOS Tahoe 26.7, tvOS 27, visionOS 27, watchOS 27. An app may be able to cause unexpected system termination.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "4.7",
  "pubDate": "2026-09-14T21:17:26.863Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-09-14T21:17:26.863Z",
  "executiveSummary": "A race condition vulnerability exists within the system state management layer of multiple Apple operating systems, including iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, visionOS, and watchOS.\nThis security flaw allows a malicious application to induce an unexpected system termination, effectively resulting in a local Denial-of-Service (DoS) condition.\nThe vulnerability originates from inadequate synchronization or state transitions during concurrent operations, which can be leveraged by an attacker to trigger an unhandled state or a crash.\nThe issue affects a wide range of platforms, specifically iOS 26.7/27, iPadOS 26.7/27, macOS Golden Gate 27, macOS Sequoia 15.8, macOS Tahoe 26.7, tvOS 27, visionOS 27, and watchOS 27.\nThe primary risk is the disruption of system availability and user experience; since the impact is system termination, it poses a direct threat to stability and service continuity.\nExploitation requires the attacker to have the ability to execute code on the target system, likely through a sandboxed application, and precisely time concurrent operations to induce the race condition during system-level state transitions.",
  "technicalDetails": "The vulnerability is rooted in an improperly synchronized state management mechanism within the kernel or critical system services. Race conditions occur when the outcome of a process is dependent on the sequence or timing of uncontrollable events, such as thread scheduling or interrupt handling.\nIn this specific instance, the system fails to maintain atomicity or proper locking primitives when handling state-dependent operations. When an application initiates multiple concurrent requests or interacts with specific system APIs in a rapid, overlapping manner, the internal state machine enters an inconsistent or undefined state.\nThe attack flow involves an attacker application exploiting the lack of adequate serialization. By flooding the vulnerable component with specific asynchronous requests or signals, the attacker forces the system to perform concurrent modifications to shared state data without sufficient thread safety. This creates a window where the internal state variables are evaluated in an incorrect order or while in an intermediate state, leading to a kernel panic or an assertion failure in a critical system daemon.\nUpon successful exploitation, the system’s error handling logic is bypassed or triggered in a way that causes the process or the entire kernel to terminate abruptly to prevent potential data corruption or further instability. Because this occurs at the system-state level, the crash often results in an immediate reboot or a forced termination of all active processes, effectively achieving a Denial-of-Service.\nThe affected versions include iOS 26.7/27, iPadOS 26.7/27, macOS Golden Gate 27, macOS Sequoia 15.8, macOS Tahoe 26.7, tvOS 27, visionOS 27, and watchOS 27. The attack is primarily a local privilege escalation or local DoS, requiring the execution of a binary or script on the target device. While the exact function names involved are not explicitly disclosed, the remediation suggests that the fix involves improved state handling, likely through the implementation of stronger mutexes, atomic operations, or refined lock-ordering protocols to ensure that state transitions are strictly serializable.\nThe lack of memory corruption primitives implies this is a logic-based race condition, where the exploitability depends heavily on the attacker's ability to manipulate the timing of the race window."
}