CVE-2015-5889

high

Published 2015-10-09 · Modified 2026-05-06

💬 Discuss on Community ✚ Propose mitigation

CVSS v3

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CVSS v4 NEW

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not yet in upstream

VIR risk

8.2

Description

rsh in the remote_cmds component in Apple OS X before 10.11 allows local users to obtain root privileges via vectors involving environment variables.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

20%

Patch ETA

—

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No mitigations published for this CVE yet.

The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or — if you've already worked around this in production — publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

✚ Propose a mitigation on Community → Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here with source_tier=community-verified.

Exploits

Public proof-of-concept code below. AS-IS, for defenders and authorised testing only.

Metasploit modules

exploit_osx/local/rsh_libmalloc rank 300

Mac OS X 10.9.5 / 10.10.5 - rsh/libmalloc Privilege Escalation

Source code queued for fetch — refresh in a moment.

OS impact

OS	Version	Status	Fixed in
macos		affected

References

CWEs

CWE-264

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.