Loading vulnerability…
CVE-2019-8781 is a memory-corruption vulnerability in macOS caused by insufficient state management. A malicious application may exploit the issue to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges. The issue was addressed through improved state management in macOS Catalina 10.15.
Mallory correlates every CVE against your assets, your vendors, and active adversary campaigns. Know which vulnerabilities matter for you, not just which ones are loud.
What it means. What to do now. Patch path, mitigations, and the assume-compromise checklist.
What an attacker gets, and what they’ve been doing with it.
If you can’t patch tonight, do this now.
Patch, then assume compromise.
1 valid exploit after Mallory filtered fakes, detection scripts, and README-only repos.
This repository contains a local privilege escalation exploit for macOS Mojave (Darwin Kernel 18.7.0), targeting CVE-2019-8781. The exploit is implemented in C and x86_64 assembly, with a Makefile for building the binary. The main entry point is 'exploit.c', which sets up a ROP chain and triggers kernel code (in 'kernel.s') to escalate privileges by modifying the saved user ID in the kernel's credential structure. After successful exploitation, the process re-executes itself as root and spawns a root shell (/bin/bash). The exploit requires the user to provide the KASLR slide as an argument and is only usable on systems with SMAP disabled (not exploitable on Macs after 2015 unless SMAP is disabled). The code is intended for research and is not weaponized for in-the-wild exploitation. The repository includes header files for kernel structure definitions and ROP gadget addresses, and a minimal helper in 'gadgets.c'. No network endpoints are present; the attack vector is purely local.
Products and vendors Mallory has correlated with this vulnerability. Open in Mallory to drill down to specific CPE configurations and version ranges.
Vendor-confirmed product mapping. Mallory continuously reconciles this list against your asset inventory.
No public activity tracked yet. Mallory keeps watching.
No public activity observed for this vulnerability.
Query your assets running an affected version, and investigate the blast radius.
Every observed campaign linking this CVE to a named adversary.
Malware families riding this exploit, with evidence and IOCs.
YARA, Sigma, Snort, and vendor rules, auto-deployed to your SIEM.
Cross-references every affected SKU, including bundled OEM variants.
Community discussion across Reddit, Mastodon, and other social sources.