5.7Medium

CVE-2025-4437

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.

What this means for your business

  • An attacker can use it remotely, over a network, with an ordinary user login, but only after tricking someone into an action such as opening a file or a link.

What to do

  1. 1Ask your IT team or provider whether any of your systems use the affected product.
  2. 2If you do, follow the vendor's guidance. No patch reference has been published yet.

Not sure if your company is exposed?

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Scoring

CVSS
5.7 (v3.1)
Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Weakness
CWE-770
Assigned by
secalert@redhat.com

Dates

Published
2025-08-20
Last modified
2026-09-01
Sources
NVD

References