Local privilege escalation in VMware Fusion SETUID binary
CVE-2026-41702 is a local privilege escalation vulnerability in VMware Fusion on macOS. The flaw is described as a TOCTOU (time-of-check time-of-use) race condition occurring during an operation performed by a SETUID binary within VMware Fusion. An attacker with local access and only non-administrative user privileges can exploit the race condition to cause the privileged binary to operate on a resource whose state changes between validation and use, resulting in elevation of privileges to root. Reported affected versions are VMware Fusion 25H2 / versions prior to 26H1.
Impact, mitigation & remediation
What it means. What to do now. For analysts and engineers who need to decide and keep moving.
Impact
What an attacker gets — and what they’ve been doing with it.
Mitigation
If you can’t patch tonight, do this now.
Remediation
Patch, then assume compromise.
Exploits
No public exploits tracked yet. Mallory keeps watching.
No public exploit code observed for this vulnerability.
Affected products & vendors
Products and vendors Mallory has correlated with this vulnerability. Open in Mallory to drill down to specific CPE configurations and version ranges.
Vendor-confirmed product mapping. Mallory continuously reconciles against your asset inventory in the product.
Recent activity
27 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. Mallory keeps watching after this page renders.
A high-severity local privilege escalation vulnerability in VMware Fusion for macOS caused by a TOCTOU race condition in a SETUID binary, allowing a local non-administrative attacker to gain root access.
A local privilege escalation vulnerability in VMware Fusion caused by a TOCTOU flaw in operations performed by a SETUID binary, allowing a non-administrative local attacker to gain root access.
A high-severity local privilege escalation vulnerability in VMware Fusion caused by a TOCTOU flaw in operations performed by a SETUID binary, allowing a local non-administrative user to gain root privileges.
A privilege escalation vulnerability affecting VMware Fusion versions prior to 26H1.
See the full picture, correlated to your attack surface.
Query your assets running an affected version, and investigate the blast radius.
Every observed campaign linking this CVE to a named adversary.
Malware families riding this exploit, with evidence and IOCs.
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Cross-references every affected SKU, including bundled OEM variants.
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