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VulnerabilityPublished

CVE-2024-36486: Parallels Desktop for Mac · UNIX Hard Link

Affects Parallels Desktop for MacSource CVE Database V5

0

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 7.8 High.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 17:16 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score
7.8High
How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.
EPSS
0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 25% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Exploitation evidence

  1. Disclosed: evidence found.

    CVE published 3 Jun 2025

  2. Detectable: no evidence on record.

    No public nuclei template indexed

  3. Weaponised: no evidence on record.

    No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB

  4. Exploited in the wild: no evidence on record.

    Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation

  5. Observed by OffSeq Mirage: no evidence on record.

    No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 26 Oct 2026.

What to do

AI-suggested

  1. Immediate upgrade: Organizations should promptly update Parallels Desktop for Mac to a patched version once available from the vendor.
  2. Restrict archive restoration: Until patched, restrict the use of the virtual machine archive restoration feature to trusted administrators only.
  3. Validate archives: Implement strict validation and scanning of virtual machine archives before restoration to detect malicious hard links or tampering.
  4. Use least privilege: Limit user privileges on macOS hosts to minimize the number of users who can perform archive restoration.
  5. Monitor system integrity: Deploy file integrity monitoring tools to detect unauthorized changes to critical system files that could indicate exploitation.
  6. Employ endpoint protection: Use advanced endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions capable of detecting suspicious file operations and privilege escalation attempts on macOS.
  7. Educate users: Train users on the risks of restoring untrusted virtual machine archives and enforce policies against using unverified sources.

Description

A privilege escalation vulnerability exists in the virtual machine archive restoration functionality of Parallels Desktop for Mac version 20.1.1 (55740). When an archived virtual machine is restored, the prl_vmarchiver tool decompresses the file and writes the content back to its original location using root privileges. An attacker can exploit this process by using a hard link to write to an arbitrary file, potentially resulting in privilege escalation.

References

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