CVE-2025-4437Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling in Cri-o Cri-o

Severity
5.7MEDIUMNVD
EPSS
0.0%
top 87.89%
CISA KEV
Not in KEV
Exploit
No known exploits
Affected products
Timeline
PublishedAug 20
Latest updateAug 29

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:HExploitability: 2.1 | Impact: 3.6

Affected Packages1 packages

🔴Vulnerability Details

4
OSV
CRI-O has Potential High Memory Consumption from File Read in github.com/cri-o/cri-o2025-08-29
GHSA
CRI-O has Potential High Memory Consumption from File Read2025-08-20
CVEList
Cri-o: large /etc/passwd file may lead to denial of service2025-08-20
OSV
CRI-O has Potential High Memory Consumption from File Read2025-08-20

📋Vendor Advisories

1
Red Hat
cri-o: Large /etc/passwd file may lead to Denial of Service2025-06-26
CVE-2025-4437 — Github.com Cri-o Cri-o vulnerability | cvebase