Analyzing CVE-2025-31191: A macOS security-scoped bookmarks-based sandbox escape


In April 2024, Microsoft uncovered a vulnerability in macOS that could allow specially crafted codes to escape the App Sandbox and run unrestricted on the system.

An attacker could create an exploit to escape the App Sandbox without user interaction required for any sandboxed app using security-scoped bookmarks. With the ability to run code unrestricted on the affected device, attackers could perform further malicious actions like elevating privileges, exfiltrating data, and deploying additional payloads. Microsoft’s Threat Intelligence research demonstrates that these exploits would need to be complex, and require Office macros to be enabled, in order to successfully target the Microsoft Office app. Similar to our discovery of another sandbox escape vulnerability in 2022, Microsoft researchers uncovered this issue while researching potential methods to run and detect malicious macros in Microsoft Office on macOS.

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Source: Microsoft


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