Vulnerability · Published Sep 14, 2026 · Assigned by JFROG

CVE-2026-90894Parallels Desktop local privilege escalation via appliance extract argument injection

High 7.8

In plain English

A high-severity argument injection in Parallels Desktop for Mac from Parallels. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.2% (higher than 6% of all known vulnerabilities).

Severity (CVSS 3.1)7.8High

Exploit odds (30 days)0.2%top 93.9% of all CVEs

Exploited in the wildNo reportsCISA SSVC: none

Attack toolingNoneno public tooling known

Official description

Parallels Desktop runs prl_disp_service as root. Local clients reach it on the world-writable socket /var/run/prl_disp_service.socket. PrlSrv_LoginLocal accepts peer credentials. No Parallels signature. No admin group. After login, PrlSrv_InstallAppliance lets you pick the appliance folder (sVmParentPath). The daemon unpacks with one string, tar -xf "%1" -C "%2", then Qt QProcess::splitCommand chops that string into words. A quote in the folder name closes early. The leftover text becomes extra tar flags. macOS tar --use-compress-program= runs the named program as root.

Affected products (as reported)

Vendor	Product	Versions
Parallels	Parallels Desktop for Mac	26.4.0

Weakness: CWE-88, CWE-78, CWE-269 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

References

Parallels Desktop for Mac product
Parallels Desktop 27 updates summary release-notes