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Privilege dropping to build user broke for macOS

High
mweinelt published GHSA-qc7j-jgf3-qmhg Jul 12, 2025

Package

Nix

Affected versions

2.30.0

Patched versions

2.30.1

Description

Impact

Builds with Nix 2.30.0 on macOS were executed with elevated privileges (root), instead of the build users.

Patches

The fix (e2ef2cf) was applied to Nix 2.30.1.

Workarounds

None

References

#13281
#13455

Severity

High

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Local
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
Low
User interaction
None
Scope
Changed
Confidentiality
Low
Integrity
High
Availability
Low

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:H/A:L

CVE ID

CVE-2025-53819

Weaknesses

Privilege Dropping / Lowering Errors

The product does not drop privileges before passing control of a resource to an actor that does not have those privileges. Learn more on MITRE.

Credits