Added security checks to prevent mounting VeraCrypt volumes on system directories (like /usr/bin) or directories in the user's PATH, which could theoretically allow execution of malicious binaries instead of legitimate system binaries.
Key changes:
- Block mounting on protected system directories (/usr, /bin, /lib, etc.)
This restriction cannot be overridden
- Block mounting on directories present in user's PATH environment variable
This can be overridden with --allow-insecure-mount flag
- Add visual warnings (red border, "[INSECURE MODE]") when mounting on PATH directories is allowed
- Handle symlinks properly when checking paths
- Add new error messages for blocked mount points
To override PATH-based restrictions only (system directories remain protected):
veracrypt --allow-insecure-mount [options] volume mountpoint
Security Impact: Low to Medium
The attack requires either:
- User explicitly choosing a system directory as mount point instead of using VeraCrypt's default mount points
- Or attacker having both filesystem access to modify favorites configuration AND knowledge of the volume password
Default mount points are not affected by this vulnerability.
Security: CVE-2025-23021
This commit fixes a critical security vulnerability where VeraCrypt could be tricked into executing malicious binaries with elevated privileges. The vulnerability has two severe implications:
1. When sudo's secure_path option is disabled, attackers could execute malicious binaries with root privileges by placing them in user-writable PATH directories (e.g., making "sudo mount" execute a malicious mount binary)
2. By placing a malicious sudo binary in PATH, attackers could intercept and steal the user's password when VeraCrypt prompts for sudo authentication
The vulnerability allowed attackers to place malicious binaries in user-writable directories that appear in PATH before system directories, potentially leading to privilege escalation and credential theft.
Key changes:
- Implement FindSystemBinary() to locate executables in secure system paths
- Replace all relative binary paths with absolute paths for system commands
- Add security checks for executable permissions
- Update process execution to use absolute paths for:
* sudo
* mount
* fsck
* terminal emulators
* file managers
* system utilities (hdiutil, mdconfig, vnconfig, lofiadm)
The fix ensures all system binaries are called using their absolute paths from secure system directories, preventing both privilege escalation through PATH manipulation and password theft through sudo hijacking.
Security: CVE-2024-54187
This update simplifies the logic for detecting active sudo sessions by checking the exit code of the sudo -n -l command, which reliably returns 0 if a session is active.
Additionally, this approach is now applicable to recent macOS versions, as they no longer have the sudo bug that previously prevented us from using this method.
The behaviour of `wc -l` is different on FreeBSD, in which the stdout
result is padded by spaces in the beginning, which causes that the
result[0] is not actually the value we care about. This patch adds
a translate removing all whitespace from the output.
Currently if you fail the privilege escalation prompt, the second
one and consecutively every second will be ignored. This is because
if we do not --use-dummy-sudo-password and are on Linux/FreeBSD,
we will be prompted for password twice for one evaluation in the
while(!ElevatedServiceAvailable) loop.
For the fix, we make sure that we run the prompt only once for each
case.
