CVE-2020-3835: 
macOS vulnerability analysis and mitigation

CVE-2020-3835 is a validation issue discovered in the Crash Reporter component of macOS that was disclosed and patched in January 2020. The vulnerability affected multiple versions of macOS including Catalina 10.15.2, Mojave 10.14.6, and High Sierra 10.13.6. The issue existed in the handling of symlinks, which could allow a malicious application to access restricted files (Apple Security).

The vulnerability stems from a validation issue in the handling of symlinks within the Crash Reporter component. The security flaw was addressed by Apple through improved validation of symlinks. The issue affects the system's ability to properly validate symbolic links, potentially allowing unauthorized access to restricted files (Apple Security).

A malicious application could exploit this vulnerability to access restricted files on the affected system. This represents a significant security breach as it could allow unauthorized access to sensitive system files that should be protected from regular application access (Apple Security).

The vulnerability requires a malicious application to be present on the system to exploit the symlink validation issue. The attack vector is local, requiring the attacker to have the ability to execute code on the target system (Apple Security).

Apple addressed this vulnerability in macOS Catalina 10.15.3, Security Update 2020-001 Mojave, and Security Update 2020-001 High Sierra, released on January 28, 2020. The fix implements improved validation of symlinks to prevent unauthorized access to restricted files. Users should update to these or later versions to protect against this vulnerability (Apple Security).