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Apple OS X DYLD_PRINT_TO_FILE Privilege Escalation

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Apple OS X DYLD_PRINT_TO_FILE Privilege Escalation

Disclosed
07/21/2015
Created
05/30/2018

Description

In Apple OS X 10.10.4 and prior, the DYLD_PRINT_TO_FILE environment variable is used for redirecting logging data to a file instead of stderr. Due to a design error, this feature can be abused by a local attacker to write arbitrary files as root via restricted, SUID-root binaries.

Author(s)

  • Stefan Esser
  • joev <joev@metasploit.com>

Platform

OSX

Architectures

x64

Development

Module Options

To display the available options, load the module within the Metasploit console and run the commands 'show options' or 'show advanced':

msf > use exploit/osx/local/dyld_print_to_file_root
msf exploit(dyld_print_to_file_root) > show targets
    ...targets...
msf exploit(dyld_print_to_file_root) > set TARGET < target-id >
msf exploit(dyld_print_to_file_root) > show options
    ...show and set options...
msf exploit(dyld_print_to_file_root) > exploit

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