CVE-2025-4598 is a medium-severity vulnerability affecting systemd-coredump on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10. The flaw arises from a race condition in the handling of SUID (Set User ID) processes' core dumps. SUID binaries run with elevated privileges, typically those of the file owner, allowing them to access restricted system resources. The vulnerability allows an attacker with limited privileges (low privilege) to force a SUID process to crash and exploit a timing window before systemd-coredump analyzes the /proc/pid/auxv file associated with the crashed process. By winning this race condition, the attacker can cause the Linux kernel to recycle the process ID (PID) and replace the original SUID process's core dump with a non-SUID binary's core dump. This manipulation enables the attacker to access the privileged core dump of the original SUID process, which may contain sensitive information loaded into memory, such as the contents of /etc/shadow. The vulnerability impacts confidentiality but does not affect integrity or availability. Exploitation requires local access with low privileges and a high level of attack complexity due to the race condition nature. No user interaction is required. There are no known exploits in the wild at the time of publication, and no patches or mitigations are explicitly linked in the provided data. The CVSS v3.1 base score is 4.7, reflecting medium severity, with attack vector local, attack complexity high, privileges required low, no user interaction, unchanged scope, and high confidentiality impact.

For European organizations running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, this vulnerability poses a risk to the confidentiality of sensitive data processed by privileged SUID binaries. Attackers with local access could potentially extract sensitive credentials or configuration data from core dumps, leading to unauthorized disclosure of critical information such as password hashes. This could facilitate further privilege escalation or lateral movement within the network. The impact is particularly relevant for organizations handling sensitive personal data, financial information, or critical infrastructure controls, where confidentiality breaches can lead to regulatory penalties under GDPR and damage to reputation. Since exploitation requires local access, the threat is more significant in environments where untrusted users have shell access or where attackers can gain footholds via other means. The vulnerability does not directly affect system integrity or availability, but the exposure of sensitive data can indirectly compromise overall security posture.

To mitigate CVE-2025-4598, European organizations should: 1) Apply any official patches or updates from Red Hat as soon as they become available to address the race condition in systemd-coredump. 2) Restrict local access to systems running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 by enforcing strict user account management, minimizing the number of users with shell access, and employing multi-factor authentication. 3) Harden systemd-coredump configuration to limit core dump generation or restrict access to core dump files, for example by configuring systemd-coredump to store dumps in secure locations with strict permissions or disabling core dumps for SUID binaries if feasible. 4) Monitor system logs and audit core dump creation events to detect suspicious activity indicative of exploitation attempts. 5) Employ kernel-level security modules (e.g., SELinux) to enforce mandatory access controls that can prevent unauthorized reading of core dump files. 6) Conduct regular security assessments and penetration tests focusing on local privilege escalation vectors to identify and remediate potential attack paths. These measures go beyond generic advice by focusing on access control, configuration hardening, and monitoring specific to the vulnerability's exploitation method.