CVE-2025-5745
Description
A flaw was found in the strncmp glibc function optimized for the Power10 architecture. Overwriting two vector registers could disrupt program control flow, possibly leading to system instability.
Statement
No Red Hat products or offerings are affected by this vulnerability.
This vulnerability is Important rather than Moderate — due to its potential to break fundamental ABI (Application Binary Interface) guarantees, which can have far-reaching implications for system stability and security. The PowerPC64LE ABI explicitly requires that non-volatile vector registers (v20–v31) be preserved across function calls. By violating this contract, the optimized strncmp implementation in glibc 2.40+ introduces a low-level corruption risk that can cause subtle and hard-to-diagnose failures in user applications or system libraries relying on these registers. Such corruption can lead to control flow anomalies, crashes, or memory disclosure without any fault in the calling code — a particularly dangerous property.
Mitigation
Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base or stability.
Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details
Info alert: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 Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).
The following CVSS metrics and score provided are preliminary and subject to review.
CVSS v3 Score Breakdown
| Red Hat | NVD | cve.org | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base Score | 8.1 | N/A | 5.6 |
| Attack Vector | Network | N/A | Network |
| Attack Complexity | High | N/A | High |
| Privileges Required | None | N/A | None |
| User Interaction | None | N/A | None |
| Scope | Unchanged | N/A | Unchanged |
| Confidentiality | High | N/A | Low |
| Integrity Impact | High | N/A | Low |
| Availability Impact | High | N/A | Low |
Vector
Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
cve.org: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L
Understanding the Weakness (CWE)
Availability,Other
Technical Impact: DoS: Resource Consumption (Other); Varies by Context
Most unreleased resource issues result in general software reliability problems, but if an attacker can intentionally trigger a resource leak, the attacker might be able to launch a denial of service attack by depleting the resource pool.
Confidentiality
Technical Impact: Read Application Data
When a resource containing sensitive information is not correctly shutdown, it may expose the sensitive data in a subsequent allocation.
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