CVE-2025-10016 Local Privilege Escalation in Sparkle Autoupdate Daemon
A local attacker can escalate privileges to root by racing to connect to the Sparkle Autoupdate daemon and installing a malicious package.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Any signed-in user
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- None listed
What is CVE-2025-10016?
CVE-2025-10016 is a high-severity vulnerability in Sparkle, published on 16 Sep 2025. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
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
Weakness: CWE-863
Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-10016?
How do I fix CVE-2025-10016?
No fix has been published for CVE-2025-10016 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.
Is CVE-2025-10016 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-10016 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as GHSA-8hp9-4f9g-73rv.