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CVE-2009-1238

27
FAUCET Score

CVE-2009-1238 describes a race condition in the HFS vfs sysctl interface within Apple Mac OS X 10.5.6 and earlier, specifically in XNU 1228.8.20 and earlier. This flaw allows a local attacker to trigger a denial of service through kernel memory corruption by simultaneously executing the HFS_SET_PKG_EXTENSIONS code path in multiple threads, due to a lack of mutex locking for a global variable. With a CVSS score of 7.2, this vulnerability is considered highly severe, requiring local access but having low attack complexity, and potentially leading to complete compromise of confidentiality, integrity, and availability. While there is no evidence of active exploitation or Metasploit/Nuclei modules, a Proof-of-Concept exploit is available on ExploitDB, and the CVE has received minimal community discussion or media coverage.

Impacted Technologies

VendorProductVersion(s)CPE
<= 10.5.6CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:apple:mac_os_x:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
10.0CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:apple:mac_os_x:10.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
10.0.0CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:apple:mac_os_x:10.0.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
10.0.1CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:apple:mac_os_x:10.0.1:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
10.0.2CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:apple:mac_os_x:10.0.2:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

CVSS Data

CVSS version used by this source: 2.0

7.2HIGH

AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Confidentiality Impact
COMPLETE
Integrity Impact
COMPLETE
Availability Impact
COMPLETE
Access Vector
LOCAL
Access Complexity
LOW
Authentication
NONE
Exploitability Score
3.9
Impact Score
10.0
CvssVersion
2.0

Exploit Intelligence

EPSS Score
0.62%
Probability of exploitation in next 30 days
EPSS Percentile
46.1%
Percentile rank of EPSS score among Peer Group
As of 2026-07-27
Model: v2026.06.15
ExploitDB: EDB-8265 · Mar 23, 2009
This CVE's current EPSS score of 0.0062 is in the 68th percentile among its peer group of 3,241 CVEs.

Social Chatter

No social media mentions found for this CVE.

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.0 Twitter, 0.0 Reddit, 0.1 Bluesky, 0.0 Mastodon, and 0.5 GitHub mentions.

Media Mentions

No media coverage found for this CVE.

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.1 InfoSec Media, 0.0 Vendor Blog, and 0.0 Security Researcher mentions.

Remediation

Remediation records are not available for this CVE.

References

secunia.com / advisories/34424
exploit-db.com / exploits/8265
digit-labs.org / files/exploits/xnu-vfssysctl-dos.c
Exploit
informationweek.com / news/hardware/mac/showArticle.jhtml
securityfocus.com / bid/34202
Exploit