Vulnerability · Published Aug 26, 2025 · Assigned by CERT-PL
CVE-2025-8597Privilege Escalation via get-task-allow entitlement in MacVim.app
Medium 4.8
In plain English
A medium-severity security flaw in MacVim from MacVim. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.1% (higher than 3% of all known vulnerabilities).
Official description
MacVim's configuration on macOS, specifically the presence of entitlement "com.apple.security.get-task-allow", allows local attackers with unprivileged access (e.g. via a malicious application) to attach a debugger, read or modify the process memory, inject code in the application's context despite being signed with Hardened Runtime and bypass Transparency, Consent, and Control (TCC). Acquired resource access is limited to previously granted permissions by the user. Access to other resources beyond granted permissions requires user interaction with a system prompt asking for permission. According to Apple documentation, when a non-root user runs an app with the debugging tool entitlement, the system presents an authorization dialog asking for a system administrator's credentials. Since there is no prompt when the target process has "get-task-allow" entitlement, the presence of this entitlement was decided to be treated as a vulnerability because it removes one step needed to perform an attack. This issue was fixed in build r181.2
Affected products (as reported)
Weakness: CWE-497 · Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:L/VI:L/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
References
- https://cert.pl/en/posts/2025/08/tcc-bypass/ third-party-advisory
- https://github.com/macvim-dev/macvim/pull/1585 issue-tracking