Medium severity · published Aug 20, 2025
CVE-2025-4437
Cri-o: large /etc/passwd file may lead to denial of service
5.7
CVSS
0.2%
EPSS
No
On KEV
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.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
Low
User interaction
Required
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.2% · higher than 16% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
RH
Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 · Red Hat
All versions, or not specified · source: vendor
Affected product
RH
Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4
Red Hat
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-4437
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-4437
access.redhat.com
https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2025-4437
bugzilla.redhat.com
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2375084
More from Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4
10.0
CVE-2026-46595
Invoking VerifiedPublicKeyCallback permissions skip enforcement in golang.org/x/crypto/ssh
10.0
CVE-2026-42043
Axios: Incomplete Fix for CVE-2025-62718 — NO_PROXY Protection Bypassed via RFC 1122 Loopback Subnet (127.0.0.0/8) in Axios 1.15.0
9.9
CVE-2026-66792
Multicloud-operators-subscription: multicloud-operators-subscription: isclusteradmin() trusts user-settable annotations on managed clusters
9.9
CVE-2025-62718
Axios has a NO_PROXY Hostname Normalization Bypass that Leads to SSRF
9.8
CVE-2026-4408
Samba: remote code execution in samr
