Iphone OsOperating system · Apple

CVE-2010-1809

HIGH · 10.0 CVSS v2.0 Published 2010-09-09
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to 4.1 or later.
See remediation →
100/100
Remediation priority · Urgent
Remotely reachable No privileges Zero-click

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
The Accessibility component in Apple iOS before 4.1 on the iPhone and iPod touch does not perform the expected VoiceOver announcement associated with the location services icon, which has unspecified impact and attack vectors.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis · moderate confidence

A vulnerability in the Accessibility/VoiceOver component of iOS versions prior to 4.1 fails to properly announce the location services icon, potentially allowing users to be unaware of location tracking or enabling malicious applications to exploit the accessibility layer.

MitigationUpgrade affected iPhone and iPod touch devices to iOS 4.1 or later to resolve the VoiceOver announcement failure for the location services icon.

Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.

Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.

NVD · CPE data
Iphone OsOperating system
Affected:< 4.1

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Authentication
None
Confidentiality
Complete
Integrity
Complete
Availability
Complete

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

Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.

dbcve checks

Work through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.

  1. Check iOS version
    Navigate to Settings > General > About and note the version number displayed next to 'Version'
    Affected if Version is earlier than 4.1 (for example, 4.0, 3.2, 3.1, etc.)
  2. Confirm VoiceOver is enabled
    Navigate to Settings > General > Accessibility > VoiceOver and verify whether the VoiceOver toggle is switched on
    Affected if VoiceOver is enabled and iOS version is below 4.1
  3. Verify Location Services are active
    Navigate to Settings > Privacy > Location Services and check whether Location Services are turned on for any applications or system services
    Affected if Location Services are enabled on a device running iOS below 4.1 with VoiceOver active

A device is affected if it runs iOS version prior to 4.1, has VoiceOver enabled, and has Location Services active, as the VoiceOver component will fail to properly announce the location services icon.

Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.

Check your environment

Paste your version and any relevant configuration and it will be compared against the affected criteria above. Do not include secrets or credentials.

AI-assisted, checked against the advisory. Informational, not a guarantee.

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

dbcve · scoped
Upgrade available Upgrade to 4.1 or later
Fixed in 4.1
Interim mitigation

Upgrade affected iPhone and iPod touch devices to iOS 4.1 or later to resolve the VoiceOver announcement failure for the location services icon.

Recommended fix Moderate confidence

iOS 4.1 or later (iOS 4.1 was released August 2010)

  1. Identify the specific iOS device model (iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPod touch 2nd generation or later required for iOS 4.x)
  2. Check the current iOS version by going to Settings > General > About > Version
  3. If running a version earlier than 4.1, backup the device data using iTunes
  4. Connect the device to a computer with iTunes installed
  5. In iTunes, select the device and click Check for Update or Restore to install iOS 4.1 or later
  6. After update, verify iOS version is 4.1 or higher in Settings > General > About
Caveat Original iPhone (1st gen) and iPod touch (1st gen) cannot upgrade to iOS 4.x and are not fixable; iPhone 3G and iPod touch 2nd gen have limited performance on iOS 4

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

Fix this in Iphone Os Scoped from the published advisory
  • Consultation1.0 h
  • Implementation2.0 h
  • Testing1.0 h
  • Review / QA1.0 h
5.0 hours of engineering $890
Get the upgrade done

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Scan for this in your stack

Free · runs locally
dbcve dependency scanner

Check whether your project pulls in CVE-2010-1809 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.

References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2010-1809 in production — separate from our analysis above.

No notes yet

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What this is

A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.

What belongs here
  • Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
  • Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
  • No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
  • No spam, self-promotion, credentials, or personal data