CVE-2025-10016 HIGH

CVE-2025-10016: Local Privilege Escalation in Sparkle Autoupdate Daemon

Vendor Sparkle Project
Product Sparkle
Weakness CWE-863 · Incorrect authorization
Published September 16, 2025
Last update September 16, 2025

CVSS base score

8.8/10
Attack vector Local
Attack complexity Low
Privileges required Low
User interaction None
Confidentiality
Integrity

CVSS vector

CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H

What the vulnerability does

01Description

The Sparkle framework includes a helper tool Autoupdate. Due to lack of authentication of connecting clients a local unprivileged attacker can request installation of crafted malicious PKG file by racing to connect to the daemon when other app spawns it as root. This results in local privilege escalation to root privileges. It is worth noting that it is possible to spawn Autopudate manually via Installer XPC service. However this requires the victim to enter credentials upon system authorization dialog creation that can be modified by the attacker. This issue was fixed in version 2.7.2

Key dates

02Disclosure timeline

September 16, 2025 CVE published
September 16, 2025 Record updated