Endpoint Security macOS Weaknesses Chained to Silently Disable Endpoint Security Agents A standard non-admin account is sufficient to conduct an attack that exploits legitimate OS behavior rather than software vulnerabilities. By Eduard Kovacs | June 24, 2026 (9:50 AM ET) Flipboard Reddit Whatsapp Whatsapp Email Cybersecurity firm XM Cyber has demonstrated a macOS attack technique that allows a standard, non-administrative user account to silently disable enterprise endpoint security tools, including EDR and MDM agents, without triggering alerts or requiring kernel exploits. Some of the underlying primitives, including the abuse of weakly-validated XPC connections and the injection of malicious payloads into application Interface Builder (NIB) files, have been publicly documented by security researchers for years and partially addressed by Apple. However, the research introduces a novel chain that exploits the persistence of the kernel’s code-signing trust cache after a legitimately signed application executes, allowing an attacker to inject a malicious payload that impersonates a trusted app component and silently invokes privileged XPC methods. The cybersecurity company noted that the attack technique abuses legitimate macOS behavior rather than software vulnerabilities. The technique was successfully demonstrated against CrowdStrike Falcon Sensor, which was fully unloaded from a standard user account, and against Kandji MDM, which was permanently deactivated via a two-stage chain. The Kandji exploit cleared the EDR guards and terminated the Endpoint Security Framework extension, XM Cyber said. According to the security firm, CrowdStrike has paid a bug bounty and added detection, while Kandji has patched the issue and assigned CVE-2026-39118 to the flaw. A third, unnamed enterprise EDR vendor was also successfully targeted and is working on a patch. Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading. XM Cyber researcher Hillel Pinto will be releasing an open source discovery tool called XPC Hunter, which automates the identification of exploitable XPC privilege escalation surfaces across all installed macOS applications, with a full presentation planned for Black Hat US in August 2026. SecurityWeek has reached out to Apple, CrowdStrike, and Kandji for comment and will update this article if they provide any clarifications. Related : New Exploit Bypasses Apple’s Boot Defenses, Affects Millions of iPhones Related : More Cybersecurity Firms Disclose Impact From Klue Hack Related : BeyondTrust, LastPass Impacted by Klue-Salesforce Incident Written By Eduard Kovacs Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is senior managing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher before starting a career in journalism in 2011. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering. Daily Briefing Newsletter Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing for the latest cybersecurity threats, trends, and expert insights. 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Hatem Naguib has become Chief Executive Officer at Sysdig. More People On The Move Expert Insights What the Latest ShinyHunters Breaches Reveal About Modern Cyberattacks Groups like ShinyHunters are demonstrating that attackers do not necessarily need malware or zero-day exploits to cause massive damage. (Torsten George) No Exploits Required Four decades of incident response experience suggest that exploits are often the symptom, not the root cause, of today’s cybersecurity failures. (Tod Beardsley) After AI Reaches Production: 12 Ways Security Teams Can Take Control Security teams need more than visibility into AI applications, they need a repeatable framework for monitoring, investigating, and defending them in production. (Joshua Goldfarb) Everybody Is Vibe Coding But Nobody Told the Security Team AI-driven development is not something organizations can or should block. But it must be governed. 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