
iStat Menus 7.10.4 - Local Privilege Escalation
Discovered by
Offensive Team, Fluid Attacks
Summary
Full name
iStat Menus 7.10.4 - Local Privilege Escalation via Insecure XPC Service and Command Injection
Code name
State
Private
Release date
Nov 7, 2025
Affected product
iStat
Vendor
Bjango
Affected version(s)
7.10.4
Fixed version(s)
7.20
Vulnerability name
Privilege escalation
Vulnerability type
Remotely exploitable
No
CVSS v4.0 vector string
CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H
CVSS v4.0 base score
9.3
Exploit available
Yes
CVE ID(s)
Description
The iStat Menus daemon (com.bjango.istatmenus.daemon) exposes an XPC service that accepts commands via the processCommand:reply: method. This service lacks authentication and authorization checks, allowing any local process to connect and invoke privileged operations.
The energymodes command, designed to configure macOS power management settings, is vulnerable to command injection. The daemon constructs shell commands by concatenating user-supplied input directly into a format string without any validation or sanitization, then executes the resulting command using system().
Vulnerability
1. No Authentication: The XPC listener accepts all incoming connections without validating the client's code signature, entitlements, or bundle identifier.
2. Unsanitized Input: The energymodes command extracts user-supplied values from JSON and inserts them directly into a command template:
3. Command Injection: An attacker can inject shell metacharacters (;, |, &, etc.) to execute arbitrary commands:
This results in the execution of:
Affected Commands
energymodes: Command injection.
fans: Fan speed control (physical damage risk)
resetfans: Fan reset.
wifi-toggle: WiFi control + packet capture.
smart: Process information disclosure.
smart-updatedisks: Disk information + network capture.
sensors-all: System sensor data.
sensors: Sensor updates.
PoC
Exploit
Evidence of Exploitation
PoC
Hardcoded Command Templates

Exploit Output

Our security policy
We have reserved the ID CVE-2025-11921 to refer to this issue from now on.
System Information
iStat Menus.
Version 7.10.4
Operating System: macOS.
References
Product: https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/
Patch: https://cdn.istatmenus.app/files/istatmenus7/versions/iStatMenus7.10.6.zip
Mitigation
An updated version of iStats is available at the vendor page.
Credits
The vulnerability was discovered by Oscar Uribe from Fluid Attacks' Offensive Team.
Timeline
Oct 16, 2025
Vulnerability discovered
Nov 5, 2025
Vendor contacted
Nov 5, 2025
Vendor replied
Nov 5, 2025
Vendor confirmed
Nov 7, 2025
Vulnerability patched
Nov 24, 2025
Public disclosure
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