CVE-2025-4598
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
Summary
A vulnerability was found in systemd-coredump. This flaw allows an attacker to force a SUID process to crash and replace it with a non-SUID binary to access the original's privileged process coredump, allowing the attacker to read sensitive data, such as /etc/shadow content, loaded by the original process.
A SUID binary or process has a special type of permission, which allows the process to run with the file owner's permissions, regardless of the user executing the binary. This allows the process to access more restricted data than unprivileged users or processes would be able to. An attacker can leverage this flaw by forcing a SUID process to crash and force the Linux kernel to recycle the process PID before systemd-coredump can analyze the /proc/pid/auxv file. If the attacker wins the race condition, they gain access to the original's SUID process coredump file. They can read sensitive content loaded into memory by the original binary, affecting data confidentiality.
Affected Software
| Vendor | Product | Version Range | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
0 < 252.37 | affected | ||
253.0 < 253.32 | affected | ||
254.0 < 254.25 | affected | ||
255.0 < 255.19 | affected | ||
256.0 < 256.14 | affected | ||
257.0 < 257.6 | affected | ||
| Red Hat | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 | 0:257-23.el10 < * | unaffected |
| Red Hat | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | 0:252-55.el9_7.7 < * | unaffected |
| Red Hat | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | 0:252-55.el9_7.7 < * | unaffected |
| Red Hat | Red Hat Ceph Storage 7 | 7 < * | unaffected |
| Red Hat | Red Hat Ceph Storage 8 | 8 < * | unaffected |
| Red Hat | Red Hat Ceph Storage 8 | 1769512383 < * | unaffected |
| Red Hat | Red Hat Discovery 2 | 1767888970 < * | unaffected |
| Red Hat | Red Hat Discovery 2 | 1767904573 < * | unaffected |
| Red Hat | Red Hat Insights proxy 1.5 | 1.5.9-1765201856 < * | unaffected |
Weaknesses
- CWE-364: Signal Handler Race Condition
Workarounds
This issue can be mitigated by disabling the capability of the system to generate a coredump for SUID binaries. The perform that, the following command can be ran as root user:
echo 0 > /proc/sys/fs/suid_dumpable
While this mitigates this vulnerability while it's not possible to update the systemd package, it disables the capability of analyzing crashes for such binaries.
ADP Enrichment
CISA ADP Vulnrichment
- SSVC:
- Exploitation: poc
- Automatable: no
- Technical Impact: partial
CVE Program Container
Additional References
- http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2025/06/05/1
- http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2025/06/05/3
- https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2025/08/18/3
- https://blogs.oracle.com/linux/post/analysis-of-cve-2025-4598
- https://ciq.com/blog/the-real-danger-of-systemd-coredump-cve-2025-4598/
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2025/07/msg00022.html
- http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2025/Jun/9
- http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2025/08/18/3
Additional References
References
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2025:22660
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2025:22868
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2025:23227
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2025:23234
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:0414
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:1652
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:18153
- https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2025-4598
- https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2369242
- https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2025/05/29/3
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