CVE-2025-8058 is a vulnerability classified as CWE-415 (Double Free) found in the regcomp function of the GNU C Library (glibc) versions 2.4 through 2.41. The issue arises when regcomp attempts to compile a regular expression and a prior memory allocation fails, either due to a genuine malloc failure or an interposed malloc implementation that injects random failures. Under these conditions, regcomp may erroneously free the same memory region twice, leading to a double free scenario. Double free vulnerabilities can corrupt the heap, potentially allowing an attacker to manipulate memory buffers, which may result in arbitrary code execution, denial of service, or other unpredictable behavior depending on how the regex is constructed and used. This vulnerability affects all architectures and ABIs supported by glibc, making it broadly impactful across Linux distributions and other systems relying on glibc. The CVSS 4.0 base score is 5.9 (medium severity), reflecting that exploitation requires local access with low privileges, user interaction, and has high attack complexity. The vulnerability does not currently have known exploits in the wild, and no patches have been linked yet. However, given glibc's critical role as a core system library, this vulnerability poses a significant risk to system stability and security if exploited.

For European organizations, the impact of CVE-2025-8058 could be substantial, especially for those running Linux-based servers, embedded systems, or applications that rely on glibc for regex processing. Exploitation could lead to memory corruption, causing application crashes or potential privilege escalation if an attacker crafts malicious regex patterns and triggers the vulnerability. This could disrupt critical services, including web servers, databases, and network appliances. The requirement for local access and user interaction limits remote exploitation but insider threats or compromised user accounts could leverage this flaw. Industries such as finance, telecommunications, and government, which heavily depend on Linux infrastructure, may face operational disruptions or data integrity issues. Additionally, embedded devices and IoT systems using affected glibc versions could be destabilized, impacting industrial control systems and critical infrastructure. The absence of known exploits provides a window for proactive mitigation, but delayed patching could increase risk exposure.

1. Monitor for updates from glibc maintainers and apply patches promptly once available. 2. Until patches are released, restrict local access to systems running affected glibc versions to trusted users only. 3. Avoid processing untrusted or user-supplied regular expressions in applications, or implement strict input validation and sanitization. 4. Employ memory safety tools such as AddressSanitizer or Valgrind during development and testing to detect double free and heap corruption issues. 5. Use hardened malloc implementations or memory allocators that provide double free detection and mitigation. 6. Implement robust logging and monitoring to detect abnormal application crashes or memory errors that could indicate exploitation attempts. 7. For critical systems, consider deploying application whitelisting and privilege restrictions to limit the impact of potential exploitation. 8. Educate developers and system administrators about the risks of double free vulnerabilities and secure coding practices related to memory management.