Security Resilience

CVE-2023-42896

Access Control in Apple Macos 12.0 – 12.7.2

Published
28 March 2024
Modified
04 November 2025
Patch / advisory
CVSS Score v3.1 5.5
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
EPSS Score 0.0020 10th percentile
Risk Priority 41 floored blend · peak EPSS

CVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.

Summary

CVE-2023-42896 is a medium-severity Missing Authorization (CWE-862) vulnerability in Apple Macos. Its CVSS base score is 5.5 (Medium).

Operationally, ranked at the 10th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to AC-24 (Access Control Decisions) and AC-25 (Reference Monitor) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

An issue was addressed with improved handling of temporary files. This issue is fixed in macOS Monterey 12.7.2, macOS Ventura 13.6.3, iOS 17.2 and iPadOS 17.2, iOS 16.7.3 and iPadOS 16.7.3, macOS Sonoma 14.2. An app may be able to…

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modify protected parts of the file system.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2025-43358Same product: Apple Ipados
CVE-2025-30448Same product: Apple Ipados
CVE-2023-27963Same product: Apple Ipados
CVE-2024-54470Same product: Apple Ipados
CVE-2024-40852Same product: Apple Ipados
CVE-2024-40839Same product: Apple Ipados
CVE-2025-31182Same product: Apple Ipados
CVE-2025-43329Same product: Apple Ipados
CVE-2024-54542Same product: Apple Ipados
CVE-2025-24143Same product: Apple Ipados

Affected Assets

apple
ipados
≤ 16.7.3 · 17.0 — 17.2
apple
iphone os
≤ 16.7.3 · 17.0 — 17.2
apple
macos
12.0 — 12.7.2 · 13.0 — 13.6.3 · 14.0 — 14.2

Mitigating Controls

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

AC-3 directly requires enforcement of authorization decisions on every access request, structurally eliminating missing authorization checks.

AC-24 mandates that access control decisions are applied to each request, preventing bypass of authorization logic.

AC-25 requires a tamperproof, always-invoked reference monitor that ensures authorization checks cannot be omitted.

AC-6 reduces the set of actions reachable without proper authorization, limiting blast radius of missing checks.

Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

blocks

Requiring formal authorization of every access request before rights are granted ensures that checks for required permissions are performed, preventing missing authorization checks from being introduced.

blocks

A.5.18's provisioning, review, revocation and activation steps (incl. owner approval, SoD, timely removal on role/termination change) directly stop exploitation of missing authorization checks by ensuring no actor receives or retains rights to resources they should not access; the bounded remainder is that it cannot stop missing-authorization defects inside the enforcement mechanism itself once rights have been granted (e.g. flawed code that ignores the rights table).

finds

By requiring competent outsiders to verify that every function enforces the need-to-know principle, the control lowers the likelihood that missing authorization checks persist undetected.

blocks

A.5.8 integrates risk assessment, requirements elicitation and governance into the project lifecycle so that authorization needs can be identified and specified; it does not itself perform or enforce authorization checks, so the missing-authorization weakness can still be present and exploitable.

blocks

Security checkpoints and explicit authorization requirements in the design phase ensure that every sensitive function is paired with an access-control check, reducing missing-authorization defects.

blocks

A.8.27 mandates security-by-design principles (least privilege, default deny, security architecture integration, zero-trust never-trust/always-verify, dynamic access control) plus design reviews that directly specify and enforce authorization checks before access; this stops most missing-authorization cases from being exploitable, with a bounded remainder in non-architectural or legacy components where the principles were documented but not fully applied.

Hardening callouts derived

DISA STIG baselines are authored against specific weaknesses. Where this CVE cites a broad weakness class, the mapping is not asserted at that abstraction (owner ruling, 2026-09-25: grade only at Base and below), so no rule is shown here rather than a rule shown against the wrong grain.

  • No fine-grained STIG row for CWE-862, a class-level weakness, and none of its children carries one either.

References