Answer in brief
CVE-2025-4437 records a Medium severity (CVSS 5.7) vulnerability in Cri-o: large /etc/passwd file may lead to denial of service. The current sources do not mark it as known exploited. The current feed maps Red Hat/cri-o (generic), Red Hat/openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-8 (generic), Red Hat/openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9 (generic). Check affected ranges and fixed versions before updating.
Analysis pending evidence review
HOL Guard separates source facts from reviewed analysis. See the methodology.
CVSS is 5.7. The current sources do not mark it as known exploited. Treat this as a source-backed prioritization signal, not a statement about your environment.
Analysis status
Analysis pending evidence review
Factual feed record only; HOL analysis is not approved for indexing. Read the methodology.
The current feed maps Red Hat/cri-o (generic), Red Hat/openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-8 (generic), Red Hat/openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9 (generic). Check affected ranges and fixed versions before updating.
| Package | Affected range | Fixed version |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat/cri-ogeneric | * | Not reported |
| Red Hat/openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-8generic | * | Not reported |
| Red Hat/openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9generic | * | Not reported |
Published upstream
Aug 20, 2025
Evidence: source:cvelist:source_dates:source-dates:recordSource modified
Sep 26, 2026
Evidence: source:cvelist:source_dates:source-dates:recordFirst seen by HOL
Aug 21, 2026
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.
Quoted source text, attributed separately from HOL analysis.