CVE-2025-32988

Public on

Last Modified: UTC

Moderate Moderate Impact What does this mean?
6.5 CVSS v3 Base Score

Description

A flaw was found in GnuTLS. A double-free vulnerability exists in GnuTLS due to incorrect ownership handling in the export logic of Subject Alternative Name (SAN) entries containing an otherName. If the type-id OID is invalid or malformed, GnuTLS will call asn1_delete_structure() on an ASN.1 node it does not own, leading to a double-free condition when the parent function or caller later attempts to free the same structure.

This vulnerability can be triggered using only public GnuTLS APIs and may result in denial of service or memory corruption, depending on allocator behavior.

Statement

This vulnerability is rated Moderate rather than Important because, although it involves a memory management flaw (double-free) that can potentially lead to memory corruption, practical exploitation is limited by modern memory protection mechanisms and contextual constraints. The issue occurs only when processing malformed SAN otherName entries through public GnuTLS APIs—an uncommon and controlled code path in most deployments. Furthermore, exploitation for arbitrary code execution is highly dependent on allocator behavior and requires precise heap manipulation, which is non-trivial under defenses such as Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), Data Execution Prevention (DEP), and hardened memory allocators. In the majority of cases, the outcome would be a crash or denial of service rather than a reliable compromise of integrity or confidentiality. Therefore, given its limited attack surface, dependency on crafted input, and the presence of strong runtime mitigations, the impact justifies a Moderate severity classification instead of Important.

As such, successfully triggering this vulnerability would require a sophisticated attack vector that is capable of accounting for the many native and deployed security mechanisms designed to detect and contain a double-free condition.

Mitigation

Currently, no mitigation is available for this vulnerability.

Additional Information

External References

Content from www.cve.org is not included.https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-32988

Content from nvd.nist.gov is not included.https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-32988

Content from lists.gnupg.org is not included.https://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnutls-help/2025-July/004883.html

Affected Packages and Issued Red Hat Security Errata

Products / Services Components State Errata
Red Hat Ceph Storage 7 rhceph/rhceph-7-rhel9 Fixed RHSA-2025:22529
Red Hat Discovery 2 discovery/discovery-ui-rhel9 Fixed RHSA-2025:19088
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 gnutls Fixed RHSA-2025:16115
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 gnutls Out of support scope
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 gnutls Out of support scope
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 gnutls Fixed RHSA-2025:17415
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 gnutls Fixed RHSA-2025:16116
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2 Update Services for SAP Solutions gnutls Fixed RHSA-2025:17361
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.4 Extended Update Support gnutls Fixed RHSA-2025:17348
Red Hat Insights proxy 1.5 insights-proxy/insights-proxy-container-rhel9 Fixed RHSA-2025:17181
Unless explicitly stated as not affected, all previous versions of packages in any minor update stream of a product listed here should be assumed vulnerable, although may not have been subject to full analysis.

Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details

Important note

CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authorities (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications ).

CVSS v3 Score Breakdown Red Hat NVD
CVSS v3 Base Score 6.5 8.2
Attack Vector Network Network
Attack Complexity High Low
Privileges Required None None
User Interaction None None
Scope Unchanged Unchanged
Confidentiality Impact None None
Integrity Impact Low Low
Availability Impact High High

CVSS v3 Vector

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

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

Red Hat CVSS v3 Score Explanation

Attack complexity is high because an attacker must supply a very specific, malformed SAN otherName that actually reaches the vulnerable code path, then reliably turn a double-free into meaningful memory corruption — a process that depends on the target’s heap allocator (glibc, jemalloc, etc.), its version and configuration, and the application’s allocation patterns; achieving that typically requires careful heap grooming to force reused chunks into attacker-controlled data, plus bypassing modern defenses (safe-linking/quarantine, ASLR, DEP/NX, hardened unlinking and stack canaries) and often additional information-leak primitives or secondary bugs, so exploitation is highly environment-specific, non-deterministic, and requires substantial expertise and trial-and-error rather than a simple, repeatable trigger.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is Red Hat's CVSS v3 score or Impact different from other vendors?

 For open source software shipped by multiple vendors, the CVSS base scores may vary for each vendor's version depending on the version they ship, how they ship it, the platform, and even how the software is compiled. This makes scoring of vulnerabilities difficult for third-party vulnerability databases such as NVD that only provide a single CVSS base score for each vulnerability. Red Hat scores reflect how a vulnerability affects our products specifically.

For more information, see https://access.redhat.com/solutions/762393.

My product is listed as "Under investigation" or "Affected", when will Red Hat release a fix for this vulnerability?
  • "Under investigation" doesn't necessarily mean that the product is affected by this vulnerability. It only means that our Analysis Team is still working on determining whether the product is affected and how it is affected.
  • "Affected" means that our Analysis Team has determined that this product is affected by this vulnerability and might release a fix to address this in the near future.

What can I do if my product is listed as "Will not fix"?

 A "will not fix" status means that a fix for an affected product version is not planned or not possible due to complexity, which may create additional risk.

Available options depend mostly on the Impact of the vulnerability and the current Life Cycle phase of your product. Overall, you have the following options:
  • Upgrade to a supported product version that includes a fix for this vulnerability (recommended).
  • Apply a mitigation (if one exists).
  • Open a This content is not included.support case to request a prioritization of releasing a fix for this vulnerability.

What can I do if my product is listed as "Fix deferred"?

 A deferred status means that a fix for an affected product version is not guaranteed due to higher-priority development work.

Available options depend mostly on the Impact of the vulnerability and the current Life Cycle phase of your product. Overall, you have the following options:
  • Apply a mitigation (if one exists).
  • Open a This content is not included.support case to request a prioritization of releasing a fix for this vulnerability.
  • Red Hat Engineering focuses on addressing high-priority issues based on their complexity or limited lifecycle support. Therefore, lower-priority issues will not receive immediate fixes.

What is a mitigation?

 A mitigation is an action that can be taken to reduce the impact of a security vulnerability, without deploying any fixes.

I have a Red Hat product but it is not in the above list, is it affected?

 The listed products were found to include one or more of the components that this vulnerability affects. These products underwent a thorough evaluation to determine their affectedness by this vulnerability. Note that layered products (such as container-based offerings) that consume affected components from any of the products listed in this table may be affected and are not represented.

Why is my security scanner reporting my product as vulnerable to this vulnerability even though my product version is fixed or not affected?

 In order to maintain code stability and compatibility, Red Hat usually does not rebase packages to entirely new versions. Instead, we backport fixes and new features to an older version of the package we distribute. This can result in some security scanners that only consider the package version to report the package as vulnerable. To avoid this, we suggest that you use an approved vulnerability scanner from our This content is not included.Red Hat Vulnerability Scanner Certification program.

My product is listed as "Out of Support Scope". What does this mean?

 When a product is listed as "Out of Support Scope", it means a vulnerability with the impact level assigned to this CVE is no longer covered by its current support lifecycle phase. The product has been identified to contain the impacted component, but analysis to determine whether it is affected or not by this vulnerability was not performed. The product should be assumed to be affected. Customers are advised to apply any mitigation options documented on this page, consider removing or disabling the impacted component, or upgrade to a supported version of the product that has an update available.