attack vector is local; attack complexity is low; privileges required is low; user interaction is none; scope is unchanged; confidentiality impact is high; integrity impact is high; availability impact is high.
Affected products
canonical multipass
Classified as
CWE-276 (Incorrect Default Permissions)
Affected Products, Subsystems & Sectors
Vendor
Product
Affected Versions
Patch Status
canonical
multipass
Subsystems
General OT
Sectors
Multiple
What to Know
An issue was discovered in Canonical Multipass for macOS before version 1.16.3 due to an incomplete fix for CVE-2025-5199. While the patch in version 1.16.0 updated the ownership of the multipassd daemon binary to root:wheel, five co-located binaries (multipass, qemu-img, qemu-system-aarch64, qemu-system-x86_64, and sshfs_server) in /Library/Application Support/com.canonical.multipass/bin/ retain ownership by the installing user and remain writable. Because the root LaunchDaemon (com.canonical.multipassd.plist) configures a PATH environment variable that prioritizes this user-writable directory and invokes these auxiliary binaries by their bare names, a local attacker can replace an auxiliary binary (such as qemu-img) with a malicious wrapper. When the root daemon subsequently triggers the binary during routine execution (e.g., via multipass launch), the malicious code executes with root privileges, leading to local privilege escalation. (NVD)
What to Do
Monitor canonical's web page for any future patch releases.