CVE-2024-55968
Published: 28 January 2025
Summary
CVE-2024-55968 is a high-severity Privilege Defined With Unsafe Actions (CWE-267) vulnerability. Its CVSS base score is 8.8 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (T1068); ranked in the top 6.7% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 AC-25 (Reference Monitor) and AC-3 (Access Enforcement).
Threat & Defense at a Glance
Threat & Defense Details
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5)AI
AC-3 requires enforcement of approved authorizations for access to resources, directly countering the service's failure to validate XPC clients, code requirements, entitlements, or versions.
AC-25 mandates a reference monitor mechanism to mediate all accesses verifiably, addressing the lack of comprehensive client validation in the privileged com.dtexsystems.helper service.
AC-6 enforces least privilege for accounts and functions, limiting the impact of privilege escalation via unauthorized XPC connections to the root submitQuery method.
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Direct local privilege escalation via unauthenticated XPC service abuse in privileged helper.
NVD Description
An issue was discovered in DTEX DEC-M (DTEX Forwarder) 6.1.1. The com.dtexsystems.helper service, responsible for handling privileged operations within the macOS DTEX Event Forwarder agent, fails to implement critical client validation during XPC interprocess communication (IPC). Specifically, the service does…
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not verify the code requirements, entitlements, security flags, or version of any client attempting to establish a connection. This lack of proper logic validation allows malicious actors to exploit the service's methods via unauthorized client connections, and escalate privileges to root by abusing the DTConnectionHelperProtocol protocol's submitQuery method over an unauthorized XPC connection.
Deeper analysisAI
CVE-2024-55968 is a privilege escalation vulnerability affecting DTEX DEC-M (DTEX Forwarder) version 6.1.1, specifically within the com.dtexsystems.helper service of the macOS DTEX Event Forwarder agent. The service, which handles privileged operations, fails to perform critical client validation during XPC interprocess communication (IPC). It does not verify code requirements, entitlements, security flags, or client versions, enabling unauthorized connections. This flaw, classified under CWE-267 (Privilege Defined With Unsafe Actions), has a CVSS v3.1 base score of 8.8 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H).
An attacker with low privileges (PR:L) on the affected macOS system can exploit this vulnerability over a network-accessible connection with low complexity and no user interaction required. By establishing an unauthorized XPC connection and abusing the DTConnectionHelperProtocol's submitQuery method, the attacker can escalate privileges to root, achieving high confidentiality, integrity, and availability impacts.
Mitigation details and further technical analysis are available in the referenced GitHub repositories: https://github.com/Wi1DN00B/CVE-2024-55968 and https://github.com/null-event/CVE-2024-55968.
Details
- CWE(s)