An issue was discovered in DTEX DEC-M (DTEX Forwarder) 6.1.1. The com.dtexsystems.helper service, responsible for handling privileged operations within the macOS DTEX Event Forwarder agent, fails to implement critical client validation during XPC interprocess communication (IPC). Specifically, the service does not verify the code requirements, entitlements, security flags, or version of any client attempting to establish a connection. This lack of proper logic validation allows malicious actors to exploit the services methods via unauthorized client connections, and escalate privileges to root by abusing the DTConnectionHelperProtocol protocols submitQuery method over an unauthorized XPC connection.
The product contains hard-coded credentials, such as a password or cryptographic key, which it uses for its own inbound authentication, outbound communication to external components, or encryption of internal data.
Hard-coded credentials typically create a significant hole that allows an attacker to bypass the authentication that has been configured by the product administrator. This hole might be difficult for the system administrator to detect. Even if detected, it can be difficult to fix, so the administrator may be forced into disabling the product entirely. There are two main variations:
In the Inbound variant, a default administration account is created, and a simple password is hard-coded into the product and associated with that account. This hard-coded password is the same for each installation of the product, and it usually cannot be changed or disabled by system administrators without manually modifying the program, or otherwise patching the product. If the password is ever discovered or published (a common occurrence on the Internet), then anybody with knowledge of this password can access the product. Finally, since all installations of the product will have the same password, even across different organizations, this enables massive attacks such as worms to take place. The Outbound variant applies to front-end systems that authenticate with a back-end service. The back-end service may require a fixed password which can be easily discovered. The programmer may simply hard-code those back-end credentials into the front-end product. Any user of that program may be able to extract the password. Client-side systems with hard-coded passwords pose even more of a threat, since the extraction of a password from a binary is usually very simple.