What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2022-26688

• Severity: medium (CVSS 4.4 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2022-05-26 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-59

Description

An issue in the handling of symlinks was addressed with improved validation. This issue is fixed in Security Update 2022-003 Catalina, macOS Monterey 12.3, macOS Big Sur 11.6.5. A malicious app with root privileges may be able to modify the contents of system files.

Affected products

• macOS: from 10.15 before 10.15.7; 10.15.7, 10.15.7-security_update_2020, 10.15.7-security_update_2020-001, 10.15.7-security_update_2020-005, 10.15.7-security_update_2020-007, 10.15.7-security_update_2021-001 (+8) — fixed in 10.15.7
• Apple macOS: from 11.0 before 11.6.5; from 12.0.0 before 12.3 — fixed in 11.6.5, 12.3

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: macOS 10.15.7; Apple macOS 11.6.5, 12.3. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213183
• https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213184
• https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213185
• https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213183
• https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213184
• https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213185

Get alerted when CVE-2022-26688 or the next vulnerability affects your stack