CVE-2016-4663 Apple CVE debrief

Who should care

Organizations that still operate Macs on macOS 10.12.0 or earlier, especially endpoint teams, Mac fleet administrators, and users allowed to run untrusted or third-party apps.

Technical summary

NVD maps this issue to CWE-119 and describes it as a memory-corruption flaw in Apple’s NVIDIA Graphics Drivers component. The vulnerable range is macOS versions before 10.12.1. The attack vector is local and requires user interaction, consistent with a crafted app being opened or executed on the target system. The documented impact is denial of service; the supplied record does not claim confidentiality or integrity impact.

Defensive priority

Medium. Treat as a priority only for endpoints that remain on macOS 10.12.0 or older, since the main impact is system instability or crash rather than code execution in the supplied record.

Recommended defensive actions

• Upgrade affected Macs to macOS 10.12.1 or later.
• Inventory endpoints still running macOS 10.12.0 or earlier and prioritize those systems for remediation.
• Limit the execution of untrusted or unsigned applications on affected hosts until patched.
• If upgrade is not immediately possible, isolate legacy Macs from sensitive workloads and monitor for repeated crashes or graphics-driver instability.

Evidence notes

The NVD record identifies macOS versions before 10.12.1 as vulnerable and classifies the weakness as CWE-119 with a local, user-interaction-required denial-of-service impact. Apple’s advisory reference (HT207275) is cited in the NVD metadata for vendor guidance. The CVE public record and NVD entry were both published on 2017-02-20; the later 2026-05-13 timestamp reflects record modification, not the original issue date.

Official resources