Breaking the Sound Barrier, Part II: Exploiting CVE-2024-54529

In the first part of this series, I detailed my journey into macOS security research, which led to the discovery of a type confusion vulnerability (CVE-2024-54529) and a double-free vulnerability (CVE-2025-31235) in the coreaudiod system daemon through a process I call knowledge-driven fuzzing. While the first post focused on the process of finding the vulnerabilities, this post dives into the intricate process of exploiting the type confusion vulnerability. I’ll explain the technical details of turning a potentially exploitable crash into a working exploit: a journey filled with dead ends, creative problem solving, and ultimately, success. The Vulnerability: A Quick Recap If you haven’t already, I highly recommend reading my detailed writeup on this vulnerability before proceeding. As a refresher, CVE-2024-54529 is a type confusion vulnerability within the com.apple.audio.audiohald Mach service in the CoreAudio framework used by the coreaudiod process. Several Mach message handlers, such as _XIOContext_Fetch_Workgroup_Port, would fetch a HALS_Object from the Object Map based on an ID from the Mach message, and then perform operations on it, assuming it was of a specific type (ioct

The article describes in-depth exploitation of CVE-2024-54529, a type confusion vulnerability in macOS CoreAudio’s coreaudiod process that enables arbitrary code execution via a complex exploit chain involving heap spraying, uninitialized memory, and carefully orchestrated crashes and restarts.[1][2] The writeup is a detailed exploit-development tutorial, but it does not directly concern AI systems or models.[1] From a CyberSE.AI perspective, such high-fidelity exploit narratives are relevant insofar as AI-powered agents or assistants with system access could be manipulated (e.g., via tool calls or automation workflows) to trigger similar vulnerabilities or chain them into broader attacks. Security teams should incorporate red teaming that explicitly tests whether AI agents can be coerced into executing local exploit primitives, handling untrusted media or OS services (like audio stacks) unsafely, or being used as convenient wrappers for post-exploitation activity.