CVE-2025-4437 — cri-o
MEDIUMCVE-2025-4437 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.7) vulnerability in github.com/cri-o/cri-o. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
CRI-O has Potential High Memory Consumption from File Read
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2025-4437.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2025-4437 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 379,842 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
github.com/cri-o/cri-oReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Go packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
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.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/cri-o/cri-o | all versions | No fix |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/cri-o/cri-o, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Remediation status
No patched version of github.com/cri-o/cri-o has shipped for CVE-2025-4437 yet. Where your build allows, override or pin the dependency away from the vulnerable range, and apply any maintainer-recommended mitigation.
Mitigate without a patch
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2025-4437 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2025-4437. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
This vulnerability was rated as Moderate by the Red Hat's Product Security team as it requires the attacker to own an account with minimal privileges to create pods using the CRI-O utility.
As for now there's no available mitigation for this flaw.Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2025-4437 (CC BY 4.0)
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2025-4437 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2025-4437 across Go dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.