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Medium · 5.6 CVE-2022-3421 EUVD-2022-42798GHSA-g3jf-h663-mqrx

Privilege escalation in Google Drive for Desktop on MacOS

Published Oct 17, 2022 · Updated Apr 21, 2025 · Assigned by Google

Description

An attacker can pre-create the `/Applications/Google\ Drive.app/Contents/MacOS` directory which is expected to be owned by root to be owned by a non-root user. When the Drive for Desktop installer is run for the first time, it will place a binary in that directory with execute permissions and set its setuid bit. Since the attacker owns the directory, the attacker can replace the binary with a symlink, causing the installer to set the setuid bit on the symlink. When the symlink is executed, it will run with root permissions. We recommend upgrading past version 64.0

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
Google Drive for Desktop MacOS unspecified – < 64.0 64.0

References