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Description

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.

PUBLISHED Reserved 2025-05-08 | Published 2025-08-20 | Updated 2025-09-25 | Assigner redhat




MEDIUM: 5.7CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Problem types

Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling

Product status

Default status
affected

Default status
affected

Timeline

2025-06-26:Reported to Red Hat.
2025-06-26:Made public.

Credits

Red Hat would like to thank Dongha Kim (BoB Project Team, Pirates) for reporting this issue.

References

access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2025-4437 vdb-entry

bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2375084 (RHBZ#2375084) issue-tracking

cve.org (CVE-2025-4437)

nvd.nist.gov (CVE-2025-4437)

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