CVE-2016-7581 Apple CVE debrief

Who should care

Apple device administrators, mobile security teams, and anyone still managing iPhones on pre-10.1 iOS releases should care most. Organizations that allow managed devices to browse untrusted web content should treat this as a patching and exposure-reduction item.

Technical summary

The vulnerability is described as a Safari component issue in iOS that allows a remote web server to cause denial of service through a crafted URL. NVD classifies it as CWE-20 and gives CVSS 3.0 vector AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L, indicating network reachability, user interaction, and availability impact only.

Defensive priority

Medium. The issue is remotely triggerable through web content and affects availability, but the supplied CVSS score is 4.3 and there is no indicated confidentiality or integrity impact.

Recommended defensive actions

• Upgrade affected iOS devices to iOS 10.1 or later.
• Check whether any managed devices are still on iPhone OS 10.0.3 or earlier, which NVD lists as affected.
• Review Apple advisory HT207271 and the NVD record to confirm fleet exposure.
• Treat this as an availability issue and prioritize it for devices that regularly access untrusted web content.

Evidence notes

This debrief is based only on the supplied CVE description and NVD metadata. Timing context uses the CVE publication date of 2017-02-20 and the NVD modification date of 2026-05-13; no Known Exploited Vulnerabilities entry was provided. The source set contains a slight scope difference, with the CVE description saying iOS before 10.1 and NVD CPE metadata listing affected iPhone OS versions through 10.0.3.

Official resources