Exploiting Apple's CFNetwork

In February 2010, TEHTRI-Security found a stack overflow related to CFNetwork on Apple products, through the code used to handle URL. As we've been doing ethical hacking and penetration tests for more than 15 years on highly sensitive networks, we automatically contacted Apple security folks, in order to help at improving their products.

Basically, we found that by visiting a maliciously crafted website, it could lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. Let's have a look at some details related to our works and to Apple patches. In this article we will only focus on threats and exploits that worked against iPhone, iPod touch, Mac OS X and Mac OS X server.