CVE-2018-7716

CVE-2018-7716 is a critical root privilege escalation vulnerability affecting PrivateVPN 2.0.31 for macOS. It allows arbitrary installed applications to exploit a flaw in the com.privat.vpn.helper privileged helper tool, which improperly handles OpenVPN configuration files. An attacker can craft a malicious XPC message to specify a controlled configuration file containing a dynamic library plugin, leading to arbitrary code execution as the root user. With a CVSS score of 9.8 (CRITICAL), this vulnerability has a network attack vector, low attack complexity, and results in complete compromise of confidentiality, integrity, and availability. While there is no evidence of active exploitation or publicly available exploit code in Metasploit, Nuclei, or ExploitDB, the vulnerability has garnered significant community discussion, indicating awareness among security researchers.