Resource exhaustion in Red Hat Openshift Container Platform 4
CVE-2025-4437
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.
Published · last modified .
CVSS v3 metric
CVSS v3 base score 5.7 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.
EPSS exploit prediction
EPSS: 0.002 (14.3th percentile), scored .
Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 14th percentile — 14.3% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.
EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.002 · newest: 0.002 · change: +0.000
Affected products
Weakness classification (CWE)
References
- access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2025-4437 (vdb-entry)
- bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi (issue-tracking)
Frequently asked questions
- What is CVE-2025-4437?
- CVE-2025-4437 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Red Hat Openshift Container Platform 4, classified under Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling. CVSS score: 5.7/10. Published 2025-08-20.
- How severe is CVE-2025-4437?
- Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.7 out of 10.