CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2020-9817 — A permissions issue existed

High CVSS 9.3

A permissions issue existed. This issue was addressed with improved permission validation. This issue is fixed in macOS Catalina 10.15.5. A malicious application may be able to gain root privileges.

Severity
High
CVSS
9.3 (2.0)
Published
2020-06-09
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
apple/platform
Weaknesses
CWE-276

Affected products

  • apple / mac_os_x
  • apple / mac_os_x / 10.13.6

Showing 2 representative product identities from 24 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.

Matched remediation archetype

Privilege escalation and unsafe privilege management

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Check exposure

  • Map service accounts, operating-system identities, roles, capabilities, impersonation, set-user transitions, and administrative helper paths.
  • Determine whether untrusted users or lower-privilege processes can reach the affected transition or modify inputs it trusts.
  • Review file, socket, registry, device, job, container, and cloud-role permissions used before and after privilege changes.

Remediate safely

  • Apply the supported fix and redesign privileged operations as a minimal, authenticated, allowlisted interface.
  • Drop privileges before processing untrusted input, verify the drop succeeds, and remove unnecessary roles, capabilities, and write permissions.
  • Validate ownership and permissions at time of use and add explicit lower-to-higher privilege boundary tests.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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