CVE-2025-43251: 
macOS vulnerability analysis and mitigation

CVE-2025-43251 is an authorization vulnerability discovered in macOS Sequoia's User Management component. The vulnerability was disclosed on July 29, 2025, and affects versions prior to macOS Sequoia 15.6. The issue was identified by security researcher Mickey Jin (@patch1t) and was addressed by Apple in the macOS Sequoia 15.6 security update (Apple Support, NVD).

The vulnerability is characterized as an authorization issue that was addressed with improved state management. According to the CVSS 3.1 scoring, it received a Base Score of 5.5 (MEDIUM) with the vector string CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N. This indicates that the vulnerability requires local access, low attack complexity, low privileges, and no user interaction, while potentially resulting in high confidentiality impact (NVD).

The primary impact of this vulnerability is that a local attacker may gain unauthorized access to Keychain items, which could potentially expose sensitive user credentials and secrets stored in the macOS Keychain (Apple Support, CIS Security).

The vulnerability requires local access to the system and low privileges to exploit. As of July 31, 2025, there were no reports of this vulnerability being exploited in the wild (CIS Security).

Apple has addressed this vulnerability in macOS Sequoia 15.6. Users are strongly advised to update their systems to this version or later to mitigate the risk. The fix implements improved state management in the User Management component (Apple Support).