CVE-2025-57849 Fuse: privilege escalation via excessive /etc/passwd permissions
Attackers with container access can escalate to root by modifying group-writable /etc/passwd files in Red Hat Fuse images.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- An administrator
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- None listed
What is CVE-2025-57849?
CVE-2025-57849 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Red Hat Fuse 7, published on 13 Mar 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
A container privilege escalation flaw was found in certain Fuse images. This issue stems from the /etc/passwd file being created with group-writable permissions during build time. In certain conditions, an attacker who can execute commands within an affected container, even as a non-root user, can leverage their membership in the root group to modify the /etc/passwd file. This could allow the attacker to add a new user with any arbitrary UID, including UID 0, leading to full root privileges within the container.
Weakness: CWE-276
Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-57849?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Redhat Fuse.
How do I fix CVE-2025-57849?
No fix has been published for CVE-2025-57849 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.
Is CVE-2025-57849 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-57849 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Red Hat Fuse 7
- CVE-2026-41731 In Spring for Apache Kafka, overly broad trusted-package matching in header mappers exposes JDK classes to deserialization
- CVE-2021-3690 Undertow vulnerable to memory exhaustion due to buffer leak
- CVE-2019-14860 Misconfiguration in syndesis
- CVE-2020-10688 Cross-site scripting in RESTEasy
Sources
Also known as GHSA-wf9w-74ph-2gqq.