Nix allows macOS sandbox escape via built-in builders
- Published
- Last modified
- Where the record stands: published, rejected by its publisher, or superseded by another id.What do these mean? →
- published
- Whether CISA lists it in its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog: proof that attackers are using it.What do these mean? →
- Not listed in CISA KEV
- Fix
- Fixed in 2.18.9, 2.20.9, 2.21.5, 2.22.4, 2.23.4, and 1 more
- Whether working attack code is public (Exploit-DB, Metasploit, Nuclei or GitHub). Public code makes attacks easier.What do these mean? →
- None on Exploit-DB, Metasploit or GitHub
- Exploitation: none
- Automatable: no
- Technical impact: partial
Summary
Nix is a package manager for Linux and other Unix systems. On macOS, built-in builders (such as `builtin:fetchurl`, exposed to users with `import <nix/fetchurl.nix>`) were not executed in the macOS sandbox. Thus, these builders (which are running under the `nixbld*` users) had read access to world-readable paths and write access to world-writable paths outside of the sandbox. This issue is fixed in 2.18.9, 2.19.7, 2.20.9, 2.21.5, 2.22.4, 2.23.4, and 2.24.10. Note that sandboxing is not enabled by default on macOS. The Nix sandbox is not primarily intended as a security mechanism, but as an aid to improve reproducibility and purity of Nix builds. However, sandboxing can mitigate the impact of other security issues by limiting what parts of the host system a build has access to.
Timeline
- CVE published
- CISA SSVC assessment
Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: partial
- Record last updated
Affected versions
- NixOS nix
fixed in 2.18.9; From 2.20.0 · fixed in 2.20.9; From 2.21.0 · fixed in 2.21.5; From 2.22.0 · fixed in 2.22.4; From 2.23.0 · fixed in 2.23.4; From 2.24.0 · fixed in 2.24.10