CVE-2025-32386 Helm Allows A Specially Crafted Chart Archive To Cause Out Of Memory Termination

What is CVE-2025-32386?

CVE-2025-32386 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in helm, published on 9 Apr 2025. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.

Official description

Helm is a tool for managing Charts. A chart archive file can be crafted in a manner where it expands to be significantly larger uncompressed than compressed (e.g., >800x difference). When Helm loads this specially crafted chart, memory can be exhausted causing the application to terminate. This issue has been resolved in Helm v3.17.3.

Weakness: CWE-789, CWE-770

Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-32386?

4 open source packages ship an affected version, including helm.sh/helm/v3 and helm. It affects 1 product.

Products include Helm Helm.

How do I fix CVE-2025-32386?

Upgrade helm.sh/helm/v3 to 3.17.3 or later.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2025-32386 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-32386 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in helm

• CVE-2019-18658 Helm Unsafe Link Following Critical 9.8
• CVE-2019-1010275 Helm Improper Certificate Validation Critical 9.8
• CVE-2019-25210 Information disclosure in n/a Critical 9.1
• CVE-2025-53547 Helm Chart Dependency Updating With Malicious Chart.yaml Content And Symlink Can Lead To Code Execution High 8.5
• CVE-2020-11013 lookup Function Information Discolosure in Helm High 8.5

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as AZL-59808, AZL-59838, AZL-59991, AZL-60145, BIT-helm-2025-32386, CLEANSTART-2026-EE09812 and 15 more.