Hello Apple Support Team,
We are seeing a production crash on iOS 26 devices that appears to originate from Apple system frameworks rather than application code.
Crash Summary
Crash signature: _xzm_xzone_malloc_freelist_outlined
Crashed thread: com.apple.network.connections
Frameworks involved: CFNetwork, Security, libdispatch, libsystem_malloc
Affected OS: iOS 26.x
App built with: Xcode 16
Devices: Multiple models (not device-specific)
Reproducibility: Intermittent, higher frequency during app launch / background networking
Observed Stack Trace (top frames)
_xzm_xzone_malloc_freelist_outlined
dispatch_data_create_alloc
xpc_data_deserialize
SecTrustEvaluateIfNecessary
CFNetwork HTTPProtocol / HTTP3Connection
com.apple.network.connections
App Context
The app uses URLSession for networking.
Multiple third-party SDKs are integrated (Firebase Analytics, Dynatrace, Appsflyer, and similar analytics/monitoring SDKs).
These SDKs perform concurrent background network requests, especially during app launch and foreground transitions.
No unsafe memory operations (manual malloc/free, unsafe pointers, or custom networking stacks) are used in the app code.
Key Observations
The crash is predominantly observed on iOS 26 and not on earlier iOS versions.
Stack traces do not include application symbols.
Disabling or delaying analytics SDK initialization significantly reduces the crash rate.
Reducing concurrent network requests and limiting HTTP/3 usage also mitigates the issue.
This suggests a potential regression in CFNetwork / Network.framework / HTTP/3 handling combined with the new memory allocator (xzone) on iOS 26.
Impact
Random app termination during background networking.
Occurs without a clear deterministic repro path, making it difficult to fully mitigate at the app level.
Request
Could you please help investigate whether this is a known iOS 26 issue related to:
HTTP/3 / QUIC networking
XPC deserialization
Memory allocation in the new xzone allocator
High-concurrency network requests
We would appreciate guidance on:
Recommended mitigations
Whether this issue is already tracked internally
Any best practices for apps integrating multiple analytics SDKs on iOS 26
Crash logs and additional diagnostics can be provided if needed.
Thank you for your support.
Best regards,
Dhananjay
Topic:
App & System Services
SubTopic:
Networking