CVE-2025-6020VulnerabilityPublished 1 Oct 2025Updated 12 Oct 2026

Red Hat Security Advisory: Insights proxy Container Image

Affects Red HatSource GCVE Database

Authoritative record:CVE-2025-6020· High 7.8

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 7.8 High : upgrade Red Hat linux-pam to 1.7.1 soon.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 14:05 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

7.8High

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

EPSS: 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 40% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.
Patch: Available – fixed in 1.7.1

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Attack Vector: Local
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: Low
User Interaction: None
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: High
Integrity: High
Availability: High

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Local: The vulnerable component is not bound to the network stack and the attacker’s path is via read/write/execute capabilities. Either: the attacker exploits the vulnerability by accessing the target system locally (e.g., keyboard, console), or remotely (e.g., SSH); or the attacker relies on User Interaction by another person to perform actions required to exploit the vulnerability (e.g., tricking a legitimate user into opening a malicious document).
Attack Complexity: Low: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
Privileges Required: Low: The attacker is authorized with (i.e., requires) privileges that provide basic user capabilities that could normally affect only settings and files owned by a user. Alternatively, an attacker with Low privileges may have the ability to cause an impact only to non-sensitive resources.
User Interaction: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without any interaction from any user.
Scope: Unchanged: An exploited vulnerability can only affect resources managed by the same security authority. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are either the same, or both are managed by the same security authority.
Confidentiality: High: There is total loss of confidentiality, resulting in all resources within the impacted component being divulged to the attacker. Alternatively, access to only some restricted information is obtained, but the disclosed information presents a direct, serious impact.
Integrity: High: There is a total loss of integrity, or a complete loss of protection. For example, the attacker is able to modify any/all files protected by the impacted component. Alternatively, only some files can be modified, but malicious modification would present a direct, serious consequence to the impacted component.
Availability: High: There is total loss of availability, resulting in the attacker being able to fully deny access to resources in the impacted component; this loss is either sustained (while the attacker continues to deliver the attack) or persistent (the condition persists even after the attack has completed). Alternatively, the attacker has the ability to deny some availability, but the loss of availability presents a direct, serious consequence to the impacted component (e.g., the attacker cannot disrupt existing connections, but can prevent new connections; the attacker can repeatedly exploit a vulnerability that, in each instance of a successful attack, leaks a only small amount of memory, but after repeated exploitation causes a service to become completely unavailable).

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 17 Jun 2025
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponised: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 26 Oct 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponised: Public exploit code exists in Metasploit or Exploit-DB, or CISA SSVC or the CVSS exploit maturity reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Upgrade linux-pam to 1.7.1.

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
linux-pam	Affected <1.7.1	Fixed in 1.7.1
GitHublinux-pam`pkg:github/linux-pam`Other threats	Affected <1.7.1	Fixed in 1.7.1

Check your own hosts for these packages with threat-finder (opens in a new tab), our free open-source scanner.

AI-suggested

Red Hat has released official security updates that fix this vulnerability. Users should apply the linux-pam package updates provided in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.x and 9.4 Extended Update Support as detailed in advisories RHSA-2025:10024 and RHSA-2025:10027. The vendor advisory provides detailed instructions and package versions for patching. Applying these updates mitigates the vulnerability effectively.

Description

The Insights proxy Container is used by the Insights proxy product RPM and serves as an intermediary between cystomer systems in disconnected networks, air-gapped systems or systems with no outside connections and Insights. The Insights proxy routes all Red Hat Insights traffic through itself, providing a layer of privary and security for disconnected customer systems.

Impact

The vulnerability could allow unauthorized directory traversal attacks within the PAM system, potentially leading to unauthorized file access or manipulation. This could compromise system authentication mechanisms or lead to privilege escalation. The severity is rated high by Red Hat Product Security. No active exploitation has been reported to date.

Summary

CVE-2025-6020 is a directory traversal vulnerability in the Linux PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) component used by Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This vulnerability allows an attacker to potentially access or manipulate files outside of intended directories due to improper handling of directory paths. The issue affects Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions 8 (including 8.0 through 8.10) and 9.4 Extended Update Support. Red Hat has issued security advisories RHSA-2025:10024 and RHSA-2025:10027 providing patches that fix this vulnerability. The vulnerability is tracked under multiple CWEs including CWE-22 (Path Traversal), CWE-476 (NULL Pointer Dereference), CWE-415 (Double Free), CWE-295 (Improper Certificate Validation), and CWE-122 (Heap-based Buffer Overflow), indicating multiple potential weaknesses in the PAM codebase. No known exploits in the wild have been reported.

CWE-22Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ('Path Traversal') (opens in a new tab)
Base weaknessLikelihood of exploit: HighCWE Top 25 (2025): #6OWASP Top 10 A01:2025: Broken Access Control (opens in a new tab)
The product uses external input to construct a pathname that is intended to identify a file or directory that is located underneath a restricted parent directory, but the product does not properly neutralize special elements within the pathname that can cause the pathname to resolve to a location that is outside of the restricted directory.
Implementation · Input Validation
Assume all input is malicious. Use an "accept known good" input validation strategy, i.e., use a list of acceptable inputs that strictly conform to specifications. Reject any input that does not strictly conform to specifications, or transform it into something that does.
Architecture and Design
For any security checks that are performed on the client side, ensure that these checks are duplicated on the server side, in order to avoid CWE-602. Attackers can bypass the client-side checks by modifying values after the checks have been performed, or by changing the client to remove the client-side checks…
Implementation · Input Validation
Inputs should be decoded and canonicalized to the application's current internal representation before being validated (CWE-180). Make sure that the application does not decode the same input twice (CWE-174).
OWASP Cheat Sheets
Authorization (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V12.3.1 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
Path Traversal (opens in a new tab)
Using Slashes and URL Encoding Combined to Bypass Validation Logic (opens in a new tab)
Manipulating Web Input to File System Calls (opens in a new tab)
Using Escaped Slashes in Alternate Encoding (opens in a new tab)
Using Slashes in Alternate Encoding (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).
CWE-476NULL Pointer Dereference (opens in a new tab)
Base weaknessLikelihood of exploit: MediumCWE Top 25 (2025): #13OWASP Top 10 A10:2025: Mishandling of Exceptional Conditions (opens in a new tab)
The product dereferences a pointer that it expects to be valid but is NULL.
Implementation
For any pointers that could have been modified or provided from a function that can return NULL, check the pointer for NULL before use. When working with a multithreaded or otherwise asynchronous environment, ensure that proper locking APIs are used to lock before the check, and unlock when it has finished.
Requirements
Select a programming language that is not susceptible to these issues.
Implementation
Check the results of all functions that return a value and verify that the value is non-null before acting upon it.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
Logging (opens in a new tab)
Error Handling (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V11.1.7 (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).
CWE-415Double Free (opens in a new tab)
Variant weaknessLikelihood of exploit: High
The product calls free() twice on the same memory address.
Architecture and Design
Choose a language that provides automatic memory management.
Implementation
Ensure that each allocation is freed only once. After freeing a chunk, set the pointer to NULL to ensure the pointer cannot be freed again. In complicated error conditions, be sure that clean-up routines respect the state of allocation properly.
Implementation
Use a static analysis tool to find double free instances.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
XML Security (opens in a new tab)
Mass Assignment (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V13.3.1 (opens in a new tab)
V5.1.4 (opens in a new tab)
V5.1.3 (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).
CWE-295Improper Certificate Validation (opens in a new tab)
Base weaknessOWASP Top 10 A07:2025: Authentication Failures (opens in a new tab)
The product does not validate, or incorrectly validates, a certificate.
Architecture and Design · Implementation
Certificates should be carefully managed and checked to assure that data are encrypted with the intended owner's public key.
Implementation
If certificate pinning is being used, ensure that all relevant properties of the certificate are fully validated before the certificate is pinned, including the hostname.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
Transport Layer Protection (opens in a new tab)
TLS Cipher String (opens in a new tab)
OWASP Authentication (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V9.2.1 (opens in a new tab)
V1.9.2 (opens in a new tab)
V2.8.5 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
Creating a Rogue Certification Authority Certificate (opens in a new tab)
Signature Spoofing by Improper Validation (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).
CWE-122Heap-based Buffer Overflow (opens in a new tab)
Variant weaknessLikelihood of exploit: HighCWE Top 25 (2025): #16
A heap overflow condition is a buffer overflow, where the buffer that can be overwritten is allocated in the heap portion of memory, generally meaning that the buffer was allocated using a routine such as malloc().
Pre-design: Use a language or compiler that performs automatic bounds checking.
Architecture and Design
Use an abstraction library to abstract away risky APIs. Not a complete solution.
Operation · Build and Compilation · Environment Hardening
Use automatic buffer overflow detection mechanisms that are offered by certain compilers or compiler extensions. Examples include: the Microsoft Visual Studio /GS flag, Fedora/Red Hat FORTIFY_SOURCE GCC flag, StackGuard, and ProPolice, which provide various mechanisms including canary-based detection and range/index…
OWASP Cheat Sheets
XML Security (opens in a new tab)
Mass Assignment (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V13.3.1 (opens in a new tab)
V5.1.4 (opens in a new tab)
V5.1.3 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
Forced Integer Overflow (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

Community reviews

Loading reviews…

Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 10 Aug 2026, 21:02 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-22, CWE-476, CWE-415 +2

Technical details

References

Community reviews

Related threats