CVE-2026-65360 in iPadOS
Summary
by MITRE • 09/15/2026
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.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 09/15/2026
The vulnerability described involves a race condition within the operating system's state handling mechanisms, specifically affecting iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, visionOS, and watchOS platforms. A race condition occurs when two or more threads access shared data concurrently, and at least one of them modifies it without proper synchronization. In this context, the flaw lies in how the system manages internal states during specific operations, allowing an application to exploit timing discrepancies between state checks and updates. This lack of atomicity enables a malicious app to manipulate the sequence of events such that the system enters an inconsistent or invalid state. The issue has been addressed through improved state handling logic, ensuring that transitions are properly synchronized and validated before execution proceeds.
The operational impact of this vulnerability is significant due to its potential for causing unexpected system termination. When an application triggers the race condition, it can lead to a crash in critical system processes or services responsible for maintaining stability across the device ecosystem. This denial-of-service effect disrupts normal functionality, potentially rendering parts of the operating system unresponsive until a reboot occurs. For end-users, this manifests as sudden app crashes, frozen interfaces, or complete device restarts without warning. While the primary impact is availability rather than confidentiality or integrity, repeated exploitation could degrade user trust and experience, particularly in enterprise environments where consistent uptime is critical for productivity.
From a technical perspective, this flaw aligns with CWE-362, which defines concurrent execution using shared resources with improper synchronization as a race condition vulnerability. The attacker's ability to influence the timing of state changes allows them to bypass expected safeguards embedded within the application logic. By carefully crafting requests or actions that exploit the window between checking a condition and acting upon it, an adversary can force the system into a corrupted state. This type of exploitation is often categorized under ATT&CK technique T1499, Endpoint Denial of Service, as it aims to disrupt normal operations rather than steal data or gain persistent access. The vulnerability highlights the complexity inherent in multi-threaded environments where subtle timing errors can have outsized consequences on system stability.
Mitigation strategies primarily rely on applying the provided software updates that contain the fix for improved state handling. Users and administrators should ensure all devices running iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, visionOS, or watchOS are updated to their respective latest versions as listed in the advisory. For developers, this incident serves as a reminder to implement robust synchronization primitives such as mutexes, semaphores, or atomic operations when dealing with shared state variables. Code reviews should focus on identifying potential race conditions by analyzing concurrent access patterns and ensuring that critical sections are properly locked. Additionally, implementing rigorous testing procedures that include stress tests under high concurrency can help detect these timing-related flaws before deployment to production environments.