CVE-2022-48503

CVE-2022-48503 Apple Multiple Products Unspecified Vulnerability Exploitation

Detects potential exploitation of CVE-2022-48503, an unspecified vulnerability affecting Apple multiple products. This CVE is listed in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, indicating active exploitation in the wild. Detection focuses on suspicious process activity, network connections, and crash telemetry from Apple ecosystem processes that may indicate exploitation attempts.

Vulnerability Intelligence

KEV — Known Exploited

What is CVE-2022-48503 CVE-2022-48503 Apple Multiple Products Unspecified Vulnerability Exploitation?

CVE-2022-48503 Apple Multiple Products Unspecified Vulnerability Exploitation (CVE-2022-48503) maps to the Initial Access and Execution and Persistence tactics — the adversary is trying to get into your network in MITRE ATT&CK.

This page provides production-ready detection logic for CVE-2022-48503 Apple Multiple Products Unspecified Vulnerability Exploitation, covering the data sources and telemetry it touches: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Sentinel. The queries below are rated high severity at medium confidence, and ship for 7 SIEM platforms — KQL, SPL, Elastic, QRadar, Sumo, YARA-L, LogScale.

MITRE ATT&CK

Tactic
Initial Access Execution Persistence
Microsoft Sentinel / Defender
kusto
let AppleProcesses = dynamic(['Safari', 'WebKit', 'MobileSafari', 'com.apple.WebKit', 'com.apple.webkit']);
DeviceProcessEvents
| where TimeGenerated >= ago(7d)
| where (FileName in~ (AppleProcesses) or ProcessCommandLine has_any (AppleProcesses))
| where InitiatingProcessFileName !in~ ('launchd', 'xpc', 'com.apple.launchd')
| join kind=leftouter (
    DeviceNetworkEvents
    | where TimeGenerated >= ago(7d)
    | where RemotePort in (80, 443, 8080, 8443)
    | where InitiatingProcessFileName in~ (AppleProcesses)
) on DeviceId, InitiatingProcessFileName
| union (
    DeviceEvents
    | where TimeGenerated >= ago(7d)
    | where ActionType == "ProcessCrashed"
    | where FileName in~ (AppleProcesses)
)
| project TimeGenerated, DeviceId, DeviceName, AccountName, FileName, ProcessCommandLine, RemoteIP, RemotePort, ActionType
| order by TimeGenerated desc

Detects suspicious activity from Apple product processes including crashes, unusual network connections, and anomalous child process spawning that may indicate CVE-2022-48503 exploitation on macOS endpoints enrolled in Defender for Endpoint.

high severity medium confidence

Data Sources

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Microsoft Sentinel

Required Tables

DeviceProcessEvents DeviceNetworkEvents DeviceEvents

False Positives

  • Legitimate Safari browser updates triggering process restarts
  • Automated UI testing frameworks spawning WebKit processes
  • Developer tools and Xcode simulators running Apple product processes
  • Enterprise MDM solutions managing Apple device processes remotely

Sigma rule & cross-platform mapping

The detection logic for CVE-2022-48503 Apple Multiple Products Unspecified Vulnerability Exploitation (CVE-2022-48503) above is provided in a vendor-neutral form so you can deploy it on any SIEM. The same logic is shipped here as native KQL (Microsoft Sentinel / Defender), SPL (Splunk), Elastic (Elastic Security (EQL)), QRadar (IBM QRadar (AQL)), Sumo (Sumo Logic CSE), YARA-L (Google Chronicle / SecOps), LogScale (CrowdStrike LogScale (CQL)) queries. In Sigma terms, this detection targets the following logsource:

logsource:
  category: process_creation
  product: windows

Browse the community-maintained Sigma rules for this technique:


Testing Methodology

Validate this detection against 3 adversary techniques from Atomic Red Team. Each test below lists the behaviour to exercise and the telemetry you should expect to see. Executable commands and cleanup steps are available with Pro.

  1. Test 1Simulate Safari Child Shell Spawn (macOS)

    Expected signal: Process launch event showing bash or osascript spawned in temporal proximity to Safari process activity; macOS Unified Log entries capturing both process starts

  2. Test 2WebKit Process Crash Simulation (macOS)

    Expected signal: Crash report generated in ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/ for safaridriver; macOS Unified Log capturing SIGABRT receipt; endpoint EDR (CrowdStrike/Defender) process termination event with abnormal exit code

  3. Test 3Suspicious Outbound Connection from Safari Process (macOS)

    Expected signal: Network connection event logged by endpoint EDR showing outbound TCP to port 4444 from curl process with Safari user-agent; DNS or network flow records capturing the connection attempt

Unlock Pro Content

Get the full detection package for CVE-2022-48503 including response playbook, investigation guide, and atomic red team tests.

Response PlaybookInvestigation GuideHunting QueriesAtomic Red Team TestsTuning Guidance

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