CVE-2025-6021VulnerabilityPublished 10 Apr 2026Updated 29 Oct 2026

Red Hat Security Advisory: Red Hat Hardened Images RPMs bug fix and enhancement update

Affects Red HatSource GCVE Database

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Mentioned vulnerabilities

CVE-2025-32415

Authoritative record:CVE-2025-6021· High 7.5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 7.5 High : upgrade Red Hat to 2.14.4 soon.

Data as of 29 Oct 2026, 10:09 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

7.5High

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

EPSS: 1.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 71% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.
Patch: Available – fixed in 2.14.4

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

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

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

Attack Vector: Network: The vulnerable component is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed, up to and including the entire Internet. Such a vulnerability is often termed 'remotely exploitable' and can be thought of as an attack being exploitable at the protocol level one or more network hops away (e.g., across one or more routers).
Attack Complexity: Low: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
Privileges Required: None: The attacker is unauthorized prior to attack, and therefore does not require any access to settings or files to carry out an attack.
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: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the impacted component.
Integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within 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 12 Jun 2025
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponized: 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 29 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.
Weaponized: A Metasploit exploit module or Exploit-DB entry exists (Metasploit scanner modules do not count), 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 libxml2 to 2.14.4.

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
libxml2	Affected <2.14.4	Fixed in 2.14.4

AI-suggested

Apply the updated libxml2 RPM packages provided by Red Hat Hardened Images to remediate the vulnerabilities. Avoid processing untrusted XML files with applications linked to libxml2 to reduce risk. Since this is a denial of service vulnerability, limiting exposure to untrusted inputs is an effective mitigation. The vendor advisory does not indicate any fixes beyond applying the updated packages.

Description

A security update for Red Hat Hardened Images RPMs addresses multiple issues in the libxml2 library, including a heap-based underflow vulnerability that can cause denial of service when processing crafted XML documents against certain XML schemas. The vulnerability requires processing of malicious XML files by applications linked to libxml2. The update includes new versions of libxml2 packages for aarch64 and x86_64 architectures. No exploits in the wild are currently known.

CWE-787Out-of-bounds Write (opens in a new tab)
Base weaknessLikelihood of exploit: HighCWE Top 25 (2025): #5
The product writes data past the end, or before the beginning, of the intended buffer.
Requirements · Language Selection
Use a language that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid.
Architecture and Design · Libraries or Frameworks
Use a vetted library or framework that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid.
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)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).
CWE-121Stack-based Buffer Overflow (opens in a new tab)
Variant weaknessLikelihood of exploit: HighCWE Top 25 (2025): #14
The product writes past the end of a buffer that was allocated on the stack.
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…
Architecture and Design
Use an abstraction library to abstract away risky APIs. Not a complete solution.
Implementation
Implement and perform bounds checking on input.
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-606Unchecked Input for Loop Condition (opens in a new tab)
Base weakness
The product does not properly check inputs that are used for loop conditions, potentially leading to a denial of service or other consequences because of excessive looping.
Implementation
Do not use user-controlled data for loop conditions.
Implementation
Perform input validation.
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-120Buffer Copy without Checking Size of Input (opens in a new tab)
Base weaknessLikelihood of exploit: HighCWE Top 25 (2025): #11
The product copies an input buffer to an output buffer without verifying that the size of the input buffer is less than the size of the output buffer.
Requirements · Language Selection
Use a language that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid.
Architecture and Design · Libraries or Frameworks
Use a vetted library or framework that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid.
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
Docker Security (opens in a new tab)
XML Security (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V5.4.1 (opens in a new tab)
V14.1.2 (opens in a new tab)
V13.3.1 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
Buffer Overflow via Environment Variables (opens in a new tab)
Overflow Buffers (opens in a new tab)
Client-side Injection-induced Buffer Overflow (opens in a new tab)
Filter Failure through Buffer Overflow (opens in a new tab)
MIME Conversion (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).
CWE-393Return of Wrong Status Code (opens in a new tab)
Base weakness
A function or operation returns an incorrect return value or status code that does not indicate the true result of execution, causing the product to modify its behavior based on the incorrect result.
CWE-125Out-of-bounds Read (opens in a new tab)
Base weaknessCWE Top 25 (2025): #8
The product reads data past the end, or before the beginning, of the intended buffer.
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 · Language Selection
Use a language that provides appropriate memory abstractions.
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
Overread Buffers (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).
CWE-825Expired Pointer Dereference (opens in a new tab)
Base weakness
The product dereferences a pointer that contains a location for memory that was previously valid, but is no longer valid.
Architecture and Design
Choose a language that provides automatic memory management.
Implementation
When freeing pointers, be sure to set them to NULL once they are freed. However, the utilization of multiple or complex data structures may lower the usefulness of this strategy.
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-674Uncontrolled Recursion (opens in a new tab)
Class weakness
The product does not properly control the amount of recursion that takes place, consuming excessive resources, such as allocated memory or the program stack.
Implementation
Ensure that an end condition will be reached under all logic conditions. The end condition may include checking against the depth of recursion and exiting with an error if the recursion goes too deep. The complexity of the end condition contributes to the effectiveness of this action.
Implementation
Increase the stack size.
Attack patterns
Serialized Data with Nested Payloads (opens in a new tab)
Oversized Serialized Data Payloads (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).
CWE-400Uncontrolled Resource Consumption (opens in a new tab)
Class weaknessLikelihood of exploit: High
The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.
MITRE discourages mapping vulnerabilities to this broad entry; the root cause is usually a more specific weakness.
Architecture and Design
Design throttling mechanisms into the system architecture. The best protection is to limit the amount of resources that an unauthorized user can cause to be expended. A strong authentication and access control model will help prevent such attacks from occurring in the first place.
Architecture and Design
Mitigation of resource exhaustion attacks requires that the target system either: recognizes the attack and denies that user further access for a given amount of time, or; uniformly throttles all requests in order to make it more difficult to consume resources more quickly than they can again be freed.
Architecture and Design
Ensure that protocols have specific limits of scale placed on them.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
File Upload (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V12.1.1 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
XML Ping of the Death (opens in a new tab)
Regular Expression Exponential Blowup (opens in a new tab)
Sustained Client Engagement (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).
CWE-401Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime (opens in a new tab)
Variant weaknessLikelihood of exploit: Medium
The product does not sufficiently track and release allocated memory after it has been used, making the memory unavailable for reallocation and reuse.
Implementation · Libraries or Frameworks
Choose a language or tool that provides automatic memory management, or makes manual memory management less error-prone.
Architecture and Design
Use an abstraction library to abstract away risky APIs. Not a complete solution.
Architecture and Design · Build and Compilation
Consider using the Boehm-Demers-Weiser garbage collector (bdwgc), which can help avoid leaks.
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 29 Oct 2026, 09:14 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-787, CWE-121, CWE-606 +7

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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