CVE-2026-12554

HP has disclosed local privilege escalation vulnerabilities in HP Easy Start for macOS, the company's printer installation and setup utility, affecting all versions prior to 2.16.7.260722. The CWE-1104 mapping indicates the flaws are associated with the use of unmaintained third-party components bundled with the tool. Per the CVSS 4.0 vector, a local attacker with only low privileges, and requiring no user interaction, can leverage the flaw to gain escalated privileges with high impact on the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the affected machine. Any macOS user who has installed HP Easy Start to set up an HP printer is affected until they apply the updated version. There is no evidence of active exploitation: no public proof-of-concept exists, the flaw is not in CISA KEV, and EPSS estimates only a 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days.

What to do: Update HP Easy Start for macOS to version 2.16.7.260722 or later, obtained from HP's official support site; the same release also addresses the related issues CVE-2026-12555 and CVE-2026-12556. Verify the installed version on managed Macs, prioritizing shared or multi-user machines where local privilege escalation poses the greatest risk. No workarounds are described in the advisory, so patching is the primary mitigation.