CVE-2025-4437GHSA-8F93-J3FX-72F3GO-2025-3897
Cri-o: large /etc/passwd file may lead to denial of service
- Published
- Last modified
- Where the record stands: published, rejected by its publisher, or superseded by another id.What do these mean? →
- published
- Whether CISA lists it in its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog: proof that attackers are using it.What do these mean? →
- Not listed in CISA KEV
- Whether working attack code is public (Exploit-DB, Metasploit, Nuclei or GitHub). Public code makes attacks easier.What do these mean? →
- None on Exploit-DB, Metasploit or GitHub
CISA's decision points: whether it is exploited, whether attacks can be automated, and how much control an attacker gets. Assessed (SSVC 2.0.3).What do these mean? →
- Exploitation: none
- Automatable: no
- Technical impact: partial
Summary
There's a vulnerability in the CRI-O application where when container is launched with securityContext.runAsUser specifying a non-existent user, CRI-O attempts to create the user, reading the container's entire /etc/passwd file into memory. If this file is excessively large, it can cause the a high memory consumption leading applications to be killed due to out-of-memory. As a result a denial-of-service can be achieved, possibly disrupting other pods and services running in the same host.
Timeline
- CVE published
- CISA SSVC assessment
Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: partial
- Record last updated
Affected versions
- cri-o
Version range not reported
- openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-8
Version range not reported
- openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9
Version range not reported
- github.com/cri-o/cri-oGo
through 1.33.3
- github.com/cri-o/cri-oGo
All versions