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No exploitation reported

CVE-2018-7716

No exploitation reported by the sources we read.

  • Published2018-03-05

Am I affected?

With a domain, we read the version its public headers and pages expose. A distribution build can carry the fix under an older number.

Description

PrivateVPN 2.0.31 for macOS suffers from a root privilege escalation vulnerability with its com.privat.vpn.helper privileged helper tool. This privileged helper tool implements an XPC service that allows arbitrary installed applications to connect and send messages. The XPC service extracts the config string from the corresponding XPC message. This string is supposed to point to an internal OpenVPN configuration file. If a new connection has not already been established, an attacker can send the XPC service a malicious XPC message with the config string pointing at an OpenVPN configuration file that he or she controls. In the configuration file, an attacker can specify a dynamic library plugin that should run for every new VPN connection. This plugin will execute code in the context of the root user.

Timeline

dates in UTC
  1. 2018-03-0523:29CVE publishedNVD

Observed activity

isMalicious corpus · updated 2026-10-23 21:37 UTC
Indicators tagged with this CVE, per day0 indicators over 7 days
Block these indicators
  • Firewall list (EDL, text): https://api.ismalicious.com/edl/cve/CVE-2018-7716?format=txt
  • CSV export: https://api.ismalicious.com/edl/cve/CVE-2018-7716?format=csv
  • TAXII collection of exploited CVEs
  • The EDL and CSV take an API key on the Pro plan.

Versions per branch

NVD
Privatevpn
BranchAffectedFixed in
2.0= 2.0.31no fix published

as publishedRanges as NVD and OSV publish them; a distribution’s build can be fixed under an older number.

Fix

No fix published by the sources we read yet. NVD record

Detection

Nuclei template
none so far
ProjectDiscovery
Exploit-DB
no entry
Exploit-DB
Proof-of-concept repositories
none listed
PoC-in-GitHub

Sources

  • NVDCVSS 3.09.8read 2026-10-23
  • NVDCVSS 2.010read 2026-10-23
  • FIRST EPSSEPSS score2.3 %2026-10-23

Technical details

CVSS v3 Vector
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Published
2018-03-05
Last Modified
2026-06-17
NVD status
Modified

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2018-7716?

PrivateVPN 2.0.31 for macOS suffers from a root privilege escalation vulnerability with its com.privat.vpn.helper privileged helper tool. This privileged helper tool implements an XPC service that allows arbitrary installed applications to connect and send messages. The XPC service extracts the config string from the corresponding XPC message. This string is supposed to point to an internal OpenVPN configuration file. If a new connection has not already been established, an attacker can send the XPC service a malicious XPC message with the config string pointing at an OpenVPN configuration file that he or she controls. In the configuration file, an attacker can specify a dynamic library plugin that should run for every new VPN connection. This plugin will execute code in the context of the root user.

Is CVE-2018-7716 actively exploited?

Active exploitation of CVE-2018-7716 has not been confirmed. Its EPSS score was 2.3% on 2026-10-23, the estimated probability of exploitation in the next 30 days.

What is the CVSS score for CVE-2018-7716?

CVE-2018-7716 has a CVSS v3 base score of 9.8 (CRITICAL severity), with vector string CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.

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