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Fencer Intel
high 8.8

CVE-2018-9105 json

NordVPN 3.3.10 for macOS suffers from a root privilege escalation vulnerability.

published 2018-03-27 8 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2018-20708

cvss
8.8
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
2.6%
EPSS 2.6% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 85%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

NordVPN 3.3.10 for macOS suffers from a root privilege escalation vulnerability. The vulnerability stems from its privileged helper tool's implemented XPC service. This XPC service is responsible for receiving and processing new OpenVPN connection requests from the main application. Unfortunately this XPC service is not protected, which allows arbitrary applications to connect and send it XPC messages. An attacker can send a crafted XPC message to the privileged helper tool requesting it make a new OpenVPN connection. Because he or she controls the contents of the XPC message, the attacker can specify the location of the openvpn executable, which could point to something malicious they control located on disk. Without validation of the openvpn executable, this will give the attacker code execution in the context of the privileged helper tool.

Exploit prediction

2.60% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 85% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 8.8 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 9.0 AV:N/AC:L/Au:S/C:C/I:C/A:C

Classification

Weakness

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.