Homebrew audit reveals security holes — most of which the team has closed

The Homebrew team has pointed to the results of an independent security audit. It uncovered 25 vulnerabilities, 16 of which have now been fixed. Three more are in progress and Homebrew was also able to confirm the other six.

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Homebrew is a widely used open source package manager and is especially popular on macOS, which does not have native package management systems like Linux. The official website describes it as “the missing package manager for macOS”. On Apple’s operating system, it is considered the standard package manager worldwide with several hundred million package installations per year. The details presented in the audit are accordingly relevant.

Good news: no critical vulnerabilities found

Security service provider Trail of Bits, which independently conducted the audit on behalf of the Open Technology Fund, discovered this According to his own statement There are no serious vulnerabilities in Homebrew. However, attackers can load executable code into unexpected places, thereby compromising the integrity of the system, which is usually protected through the use of sandbox techniques.

Security issues were also found in Homebrew’s CI/CD process. These could allow attackers to covertly modify binaries created by Homebrew (“bottle builds”). This would allow them not only to trigger CI/CD workflows, but also to control their execution and steal sensitive information.

Most of these vulnerabilities have now been fixed, as done by the Homebrew team Communicated transparently. Interested users should also note the extensive information in this context Homebrew Security Assessment Report Recommended, which is available as a PDF via GitHub.

Trail of Bits and the Homebrew team jointly pointed out that obtaining code from external sources is the nature of package managers, and the hard distinction between expected and unexpected code execution naturally poses an inherent security risk. However, overall, Homebrew is rated as a mature system, especially in terms of the reduced need for human intervention in the package lifecycle. However, if insiders or malicious maintainers undermine the integrity and isolation mechanisms of the CI/CD system, the measures may not provide sufficient protection.

(RME)

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