CVE-2025-32988 is a medium-severity double-free vulnerability found in the GnuTLS library, specifically affecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10. The flaw arises from improper ownership handling in the export logic of Subject Alternative Name (SAN) entries that contain an 'otherName' field. When the type-id Object Identifier (OID) is invalid or malformed, GnuTLS mistakenly calls asn1_delete_structure() on an ASN.1 node it does not own. This leads to a double-free condition when the parent function or caller later attempts to free the same memory structure again. The vulnerability can be triggered remotely using only public GnuTLS APIs, without requiring authentication or user interaction. Exploitation may result in denial of service (DoS) due to application or system crashes, or potentially memory corruption, which could be leveraged for further attacks depending on the allocator behavior. The vulnerability has a CVSS 3.1 base score of 6.5, reflecting a network attack vector with high attack complexity, no privileges required, no user interaction, and impact limited to integrity (low) and availability (high). No known exploits are reported in the wild as of the publication date, July 10, 2025. The affected product is Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, which bundles GnuTLS as a core cryptographic library used in various network services and applications for secure communications. The flaw is technical and subtle, involving ASN.1 parsing and memory management, which are critical components in TLS implementations.

For European organizations, the impact of this vulnerability can be significant, especially for those relying on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 in their infrastructure. GnuTLS is widely used in secure communications, including web servers, mail servers, VPNs, and other network services. Exploitation could lead to denial of service conditions, causing service outages and disruption of business operations. Memory corruption could potentially be escalated to remote code execution, although this is not confirmed and would depend on allocator behavior and exploitation complexity. Critical sectors such as finance, healthcare, government, and telecommunications that depend on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 for secure communications could face operational risks and potential data integrity issues. Additionally, disruption of services could affect compliance with European data protection regulations like GDPR if availability is impacted. Since the vulnerability can be triggered remotely without authentication, it increases the attack surface for external threat actors targeting exposed services. However, the high attack complexity somewhat limits the ease of exploitation.

European organizations should prioritize patching Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 systems once an official fix is released by Red Hat. Until patches are available, organizations can mitigate risk by limiting exposure of services using GnuTLS to untrusted networks, employing network-level filtering and segmentation to restrict access. Monitoring and logging of TLS-related service crashes or anomalies can help detect exploitation attempts. Administrators should audit their use of GnuTLS APIs, especially those handling SAN entries with otherName fields, and consider disabling or restricting features that process untrusted or malformed certificates if feasible. Employing application-layer mitigations such as rate limiting and anomaly detection on TLS connections may reduce exploitation likelihood. Regularly updating and hardening the underlying operating system and cryptographic libraries will also reduce overall risk. Finally, organizations should prepare incident response plans for potential denial of service attacks targeting critical services.