CVE-2009-1238
Race condition in the HFS vfs sysctl interface in XNU 1228.8.20 and earlier on Apple Mac OS X 10.5.6 and earlier allows local users to…
- 7.2HighCVSS base score
- 0.62%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 50% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- 1Public exploitsMetasploit, Nuclei and Exploit-DB
Description
Race condition in the HFS vfs sysctl interface in XNU 1228.8.20 and earlier on Apple Mac OS X 10.5.6 and earlier allows local users to cause a denial of service (kernel memory corruption) by simultaneously executing the same HFS_SET_PKG_EXTENSIONS code path in multiple threads, which is problematic because of lack of mutex locking for an unspecified global variable.
Public exploit
An exploit or proof of concept is public: anyone can try it against an unpatched system. The public collections list an Exploit-DB entry for it. A reference of the record is tagged as an exploit.
Show the exploits2
Exploit-DB1 entry
- Apple Mac OSX xnu 1228.x - 'vfssysctl' Local Kernel Denial of Service (PoC) (Exploit-DB entry) (opens in a new tab)
EDB-ID 8265dos, osxpublished 23 Mar 2009Verified
References tagged exploit1 reference
- 8265 (opens in a new tab)exploitx_refsource_EXPLOIT-DBx_transferred
Modules, templates and exploits as listed by the Metasploit Framework (BSD-3-Clause), ProjectDiscovery's Nuclei templates (MIT) and the Exploit Database (GPLv2), read once a day. Where the data comes from
Timeline
ID reserved
By mitre
Published
- 15 years later
· 15 years later
Record updated
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| NVDNVD · Modified | 2.0 | High7.2 | AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 0.62% · top 50% of all CVEs (11 Nov 2026)
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: High 7.2.
Affected products
n/a
- affected n/a
References
References5
- 8265 (opens in a new tab)exploitx_refsource_EXPLOIT-DBx_transferred
- 34202 (opens in a new tab)vdb-entryx_refsource_BIDx_transferred
- 34424 (opens in a new tab)third-party-advisoryx_refsource_SECUNIAx_transferred
- http://www.digit-labs.org/files/exploits/xnu-vfssysctl-dos.c (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISCx_transferred
- http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/mac/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=216401181 (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISCx_transferred
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- EUVD EUVD-2009-1237 (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2009-1238)Record last updated .