Fresh from the XM Cyber Research Labs: Automating macOS Privilege Escalation at Scale

A year of low-level research into macOS internals has uncovered a novel userland privilege escalation vulnerability that requires no kernel exploits or SIP bypasses.

The technique exploits macOS XPC communication channels, allowing an unsigned binary from a standard user to forge a trusted identity and bypass the vendor Developer ID signature checks that root daemons rely on.

Once across this trust boundary, an unprivileged attacker can achieve full code execution as root and force major security products, like EDR and MDM software, to disable or uninstall themselves on command.

Hillel Pinto, Senior Security Researcher at XM Cyber will feature live demonstrations of this exploit against leading security tools alongside the release of "XPC Hunter," an open-source tool that uses runtime enumeration and AI-powered analysis to detect this vulnerability class.

All findings have already been responsibly shared through coordinated disclosure, earning assigned CVEs and bug bounties from the affected vendors.

Catch Hillel live on Wednesday, August 5 | 11:20am-12:20pm (Arsenal Station 4, Business Hall) - come watch XPC Hunter in action and let's talk macOS internals.