CVE-2018-9105 Information

Description

NordVPN 3.3.10 for macOS suffers from a root privilege escalation vulnerability. The vulnerability stems from its privileged helper tool’s implemented XPC service. This XPC service is responsible for receiving and processing new OpenVPN connection requests from the main application. Unfortunately this XPC service is not protected which allows arbitrary applications to connect and send it XPC messages. An attacker can send a crafted XPC message to the privileged helper tool requesting it make a new OpenVPN connection. Because he or she controls the contents of the XPC message the attacker can specify the location of the openvpn executable which could point to something malicious they control located on disk. Without validation of the openvpn executable this will give the attacker code execution in the context of the privileged helper tool.

CVSS Vector

CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Reference

https://exchange.xforce.ibmcloud.com/vulnerabilities/140939 https://github.com/VerSprite/research/blob/master/advisories/VS-2018-015.md

Attack Complexity

LOW

Privileges Required

LOW

User Interaction Required

LOW

Scope

NONE

Confidentiality Impact

UNCHANGED

Integrity Impact

HIGH

Availability Impact

HIGH

Base Score

HIGH

Base Severity

8.8