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.
CVE-2025-4437
Score 5.7 from GitHub Security Advisory published 2025-08-20. NVD baseline CVSS 5.7; sources differ by 0.0.
- Lower severity and no public exploit yet
No vendor fix yet — apply a workaround or compensating control (WAF / firewall / segmentation) and watch for a patch.
- CVSS v3
- 5.7
- EG Score
- 5.7(medium)
- EG Risk
- 26(Track)EG Risk 26/100SSVC: Track
EG Risk is EchelonGraph's 0–100 priority score: it fuses intrinsic severity with real-world exploitation and automatability so you can rank equal-severity CVEs and fix the most dangerous first. Higher = act sooner. Distinct from the 0–10 EG Score (severity).
How it’s computedSeverity57% × 45%Exploitation0% × 40%Automatability0% × 15%Action: Routine — remediate on your standard cadence. - EPSS PROB
- 0%
- EPSS %ILE
- 16%
- KEV
- Not listed
Published
August 20, 2025
Last Modified
September 1, 2026
Advisory Details (2)
Auto-updated Aug 21, 20262375084 – (CVE-2025-4437) CVE-2025-4437 cri-o: Large /etc/passwd file may lead to Denial of Service
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2375084CVE-2025-4437 - Red Hat Customer Portal
Affected: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 or OpenShift Container Platform 4, is affected by this vulnerability and a fix may be released to a
https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2025-4437Patch Availability(1)
| Vendor / Ecosystem | Fixed in / Patch | Released | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| go | github.com/cri-o/cri-o | — | ghsa |
Patches are aggregated from vendor advisories (Red Hat, Microsoft, Cisco, GitHub) and package ecosystems (OSV, GHSA). Multiple rows for the same upstream release have been deduplicated.
Affected Packages
(1 across 1 ecosystem)
Go(1)
| Package | Vulnerable range | Fixed in | Dependents |
|---|---|---|---|
| github.com/cri-o/cri-o | — | — | — |
Weakness Classification(1)
MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration — the root-cause categories this CVE belongs to.
Data Freshness Timeline
(refreshed 5× in last 7d / 33× in last 30d)
Each row is a source pipeline that fetched or updated this CVE on that date, with what changed. For example, "NVD update" means NVD published or revised its analysis for this CVE; "MITRE cvelistV5" means we ingested or refreshed it from the CNA feed. Most recent first.
Showing the most recent 100 of 192 total refreshes for this CVE.
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Frequently asked(5)
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Dependency Blast Radius
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