Vulnerability CVE-2023-41036
Published: 2023-11-07

Description:
Macvim is a text editor for MacOS. Prior to version 178, Macvim makes use of an insecure interprocess communication (IPC) mechanism which could lead to a privilege escalation. Distributed objects are a concept introduced by Apple which allow one program to vend an interface to another program. What is not made clear in the documentation is that this service can vend this interface to any other program on the machine. The impact of exploitation is a privilege escalation to root - this is likely to affect anyone who is not careful about the software they download and use MacVim to edit files that would require root privileges. Version 178 contains a fix for this issue.

 References:
https://github.com/macvim-dev/macvim/security/advisories/GHSA-9jgj-jfwg-99fv
https://github.com/macvim-dev/macvim/commit/399b43e9e1dbf656a1780e87344f4d3c875e4cda
https://github.com/macvim-dev/macvim/blob/d9de087dddadbfd82fcb5dc9734380a2f829bd0a/src/MacVim/MMAppController.h#L28
ttps://github.com/macvim-dev/macvim/blob/d9de087dddadbfd82fcb5dc9734380a2f829bd0a/src/MacVim/MMBackend.h
Copyright 2026, cxsecurity.com

 

Back to Top