CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2020-9868 — A certificate validation issue existed when processing administrator added certificates

Critical CVSS 9.1

A certificate validation issue existed when processing administrator added certificates. This issue was addressed with improved certificate validation. This issue is fixed in iOS 13.6 and iPadOS 13.6, macOS Catalina 10.15.6, tvOS 13.4.8, watchOS 6.2.8. An attacker may have been able to impersonate a trusted website using shared key material for an administrator added certificate.

Severity
Critical
CVSS
9.1 (3.1)
Published
2020-10-22
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
apple/platform
Weaknesses
CWE-295

Affected products

  • apple / ipados
  • apple / iphone_os
  • apple / mac_os_x
  • apple / tvos
  • apple / watchos

Matched remediation archetype

Cryptography, certificate, signature, and channel validation

This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.

Check exposure

  • Inventory affected algorithms, key uses, trust stores, certificate validation settings, random sources, and plaintext channels across clients and services.
  • Determine which secrets, identities, signatures, or data protections depend on the affected primitive or validation path.
  • Check debug, compatibility, fallback, and hostname or audience override settings in build and runtime configuration.

Remediate safely

  • Use a maintained platform cryptographic API with approved algorithms, modes, parameters, randomness, and full peer identity validation.
  • Remove insecure fallback and validation bypasses; separate keys by purpose and load them from managed secret storage.
  • Plan rotation or reissuance for affected keys, certificates, tokens, hashes, or ciphertext and document compatibility sequencing.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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