# CVE-2022-45873: Denial of service in n/a

> Local attackers can cause a systemd-coredump deadlock by triggering crashes with deep backtraces, leading to denial of service.

- **Severity:** Medium 5.5 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Any signed-in user
- **Attackable:** Local or same network only
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** Yes
- **Published:** 23 Nov 2022
- **Updated:** 14 Oct 2026
- **Also known as:** AZL-11523, AZL-41470, DEBIAN-CVE-2022-45873, GHSA-3w8w-mhj7-j5rc

## What is CVE-2022-45873?

CVE-2022-45873 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Fedoraproject Fedora, published on 23 Nov 2022. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

systemd 250 and 251 allows local users to achieve a systemd-coredump deadlock by triggering a crash that has a long backtrace. This occurs in parse_elf_object in shared/elf-util.c. The exploitation methodology is to crash a binary calling the same function recursively, and put it in a deeply nested directory to make its backtrace large enough to cause the deadlock. This must be done 16 times when MaxConnections=16 is set for the systemd/units/systemd-coredump.socket file.

Weakness: CWE-400 (Uncontrolled Resource Consumption)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-45873?

It affects 2 products.


Products: Fedoraproject Fedora, Systemd Project Systemd.

## How do I fix CVE-2022-45873?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2022-45873 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-45873 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Fedoraproject Fedora

- [CVE-2024-4577](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2024-4577/): PHP-CGI OS Command Injection (critical 9.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2021-39226](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2021-39226/): Grafana Authentication Bypass (critical 9.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2019-5544](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2019-5544/): VMware ESXi and Horizon DaaS OpenSLP Heap-Based Buffer Overflow (critical 9.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2024-4947](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2024-4947/): Google Chromium V8 Type Confusion (critical 9.6, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2024-4671](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2024-4671/): Google Chromium Visuals Use-After-Free (critical 9.6, exploited in the wild)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2022-45873 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2022-45873 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Fedoraproject Fedora, published on 23 Nov 2022. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-45873 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Fedoraproject Fedora. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-45873/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-45873/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2022-45873
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-45873
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2022-45873

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-45873/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.