CVE-2026-86819 PUBLISHED

Waves Central local privilege escalation via Improper XPC Client Authentication in macOS

Assigner: cisa-cg
Reserved: 08.09.2026 Published: 08.09.2026 Updated: 08.09.2026

Waves Central for macOS contains a local privilege escalation in the privileged helper service. The helper authorizes connecting XPC clients by comparing the caller's code-signing certificate chain for equality with its own, rather than validating the caller against a pinned code requirement (application identifier and Team ID). A local, authenticated user can execute code within the vendor-signed process, satisfy the helper's client check, and cause the helper to execute a script with root privileges. Fixed in 17.0.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
CVSS Score: 8.4

Product Status

Vendor Waves Audio Ltd.
Product Waves Central
Versions Default: unknown
  • affected from 16.6.2 to 17.0 (excl.)
  • Version 17.0 is unaffected

Credits

  • Shravan Kumar Sheri, Independent Security Researcher

References

Problem Types

  • CWE-862 Missing Authorization CWE