Having confirmed that the bug in TCC could be exploited, Microsoft's Security Researchers shared their findings with Apple in July 2021, via Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure (CVD), to allow the Cupertino company to patch the issue. Interestingly, the researchers had to update their proof-of-concept exploit, after a macOS update prevented the initial version from working. The report goes on to state that Microsoft was aware of other similar exploits, but these had been fixed by Apple, but when testing a fix for one of these, the researchers stumbled upon a new bug, Powerdir. He notes that three such TCC related issues, namely Time Machine mounts (CVE-2020-9771), Environment variable poisoning (CVE-2020-9934), and Bundle conclusion issue (CVE-2021-30713), were patched by Apple since 2020. This is not the first time TCC has been found to be vulnerable, writes, Jonathan Bar Or, Senior Security Researcher at Microsoft. The above screenshot, from Microsoft's team, shows a proof-of-concept exploit to highlight how the Powerdir vulnerability was successful in gaining access to the user data. a hacker could install replace an app with a malicious one to record private conversations, take screenshots of the user's screen, aka spy on the user. This exploit could have potentially be used for targeted attacks, e.g. Microsoft's researchers discovered that changing the home directory of a user, and spoofing a fake TCC database in its place, was enough to allow apps to bypass TCC's protection and compromise the data it should have protected. This technology prevent apps from accessing the user's personal data like the iCloud, Calendar, as well as hardware such as the camera, microphone and location.Īpple had a security feature in place to restrict apps from accessing TCC, this policy only allowed apps with full disk access to make changes.

It is a security loophole that impacts a component in macOS called Transparency, Consent, and Control (TCC). This is the 2nd time the Redmond company discovered a security issue in macOS, after the Shrootless vulnerability, that came to light in October 2021. The Microsoft 365 Defender Research Team has revealed that it discovered a security vulnerability in macOS Monterey.

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