About the security content of Mac EFI Security Update 2015-001

This document describes the security content of Mac EFI Security Update 2015-001.

For the protection of our customers, Apple does not disclose, discuss, or confirm security issues until a full investigation has occurred and any necessary patches or releases are available. To learn more about Apple Product Security, see the Apple Product Security website.

For information about the Apple Product Security PGP Key, see How to use the Apple Product Security PGP Key.

Where possible, CVE IDs are used to reference the vulnerabilities for further information.

To learn about other security updates, see Apple security updates.

Mac EFI Security Update 2015-001

• EFI

  Available for: OS X Mountain Lion v10.8.5, OS X Mavericks v10.9.5

  Impact: A malicious application with root privileges may be able to modify EFI flash memory

  Description: An insufficient locking issue existed with EFI flash when resuming from sleep states. This issue was addressed through improved locking.

  CVE-ID

  CVE-2015-3692 : Trammell Hudson of Two Sigma Investments, Xeno Kovah and Corey Kallenberg of LegbaCore LLC, Pedro Vilaça

• EFI

  Available for: OS X Mountain Lion v10.8.5, OS X Mavericks v10.9.5

  Impact: A malicious application may induce memory corruption to escalate privileges

  Description: A disturbance error, also known as Rowhammer, exists with some DDR3 RAM that could have led to memory corruption. This issue was mitigated by increasing memory refresh rates.

  CVE-ID

  CVE-2015-3693 : Mark Seaborn and Thomas Dullien of Google, working from original research by Yoongu Kim et al (2014)