Objective-See Found Flaw Let Attackers Take Over ChatGPT Mac App

The finding came from the Objective-See Foundation, a group focused on Apple security, and its analyst Patrick Wardle says the vulnerability was "insanely trivial" to exploit. The design of the macOS ChatGPT app depends on digital signatures checked at three layers of remove from a request, so that a component can only act on behalf of trusted OpenAI software. Wardle's team showed that a trusted script interpreter could accept an untrusted script, and that spawning it three times let the malicious script satisfy those validity checks and reach the main ChatGPT process, which is why the gap mattered out of proportion to its size.

Wardle has been looking at several AI macOS applications, not only ChatGPT. He recently found a flaw, now patched, in the dictation feature of Meta's new Muse AI assistant that could have let a local attacker grab a mishandled authentication token and reach user data. He also says he has submitted a new vulnerability finding to OpenAI related to the link between ChatGPT and the company's new always-on Dots AI assistant, which OpenAI is reviewing.

The timing of this disclosure matters because AI assistants are being granted broad reach into everyday machines to function. Wardle's view, that security is often an afterthought as companies rush features out, suggests the test of these platforms may be less about how fast they patch one bug and more about whether security keeps pace as their access grows. That reading is Wardle's, not a measured industry trend.