What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2025-54595: Pearcleaner's unauthenticated access to privileged XPC helper allows root command execution

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.3 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2025-08-01 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-78

Description

Pearcleaner is a free, source-available and fair-code licensed mac app cleaner. The PearcleanerHelper is a privileged helper tool bundled with the Pearcleaner application. It is registered and activated only after the user approves a system prompt to allow privileged operations. Upon approval, the helper is configured as a LaunchDaemon and runs with root privileges. In versions 4.4.0 through 4.5.1, the helper registers an XPC service (com.alienator88.Pearcleaner.PearcleanerHelper) and accepts unauthenticated connections from any local process. It exposes a method that executes arbitrary shell commands. This allows any local unprivileged user to escalate privileges to root once the helper is approved and active. This issue is fixed in version 4.5.2.

Affected products

• alienator88 Pearcleaner: from 4.4.0, < 4.5.2

References

• https://github.com/alienator88/Pearcleaner/commit/69afadfa95791cb998118ca35c227007b230b984
• https://github.com/alienator88/Pearcleaner/issues/278
• https://github.com/alienator88/Pearcleaner/releases/tag/4.5.2
• https://github.com/alienator88/Pearcleaner/security/advisories/GHSA-gr2j-65fh-8pvc

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