CVE-2025-0838

Critical

Published: 21 February 2025

Published

21 February 2025

Modified

30 July 2025

KEV Added

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Patch

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CVSS Score 9.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

EPSS Score 0.0013 32.7th percentile

Risk Priority 20 60% EPSS · 20% KEV · 20% CVSS

Summary

CVE-2025-0838 is a critical-severity Integer Overflow or Wraparound (CWE-190) vulnerability in Abseil Common Libraries. Its CVSS base score is 9.8 (Critical).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190); ranked at the 32.7th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 SI-16 (Memory Protection) and SI-2 (Flaw Remediation).

Threat & Defense at a Glance

What attackers do: exploitation maps to Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190). What defenders deploy: see the NIST 800-53 controls recommended below.

Threat & Defense Details

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5)AI

SI-2 Flaw Remediation good match

prevent

SI-2 mandates timely identification, reporting, and remediation of software flaws, directly requiring upgrade of vulnerable Abseil-cpp past the specified commit to eliminate the integer overflow and heap buffer overflow.

SI-16 Memory Protection good match

prevent

SI-16 enforces memory protections such as non-executable memory regions and address space layout randomization to prevent exploitation of heap buffer overflows through unauthorized code execution or corruption.

SI-10 Information Input Validation partial match

prevent

SI-10 requires validation of information inputs like size arguments to Abseil-cpp hash container methods, preventing excessively large values that trigger the integer overflow.

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI

T1190 Exploit Public-Facing Application Initial Access

Adversaries may attempt to exploit a weakness in an Internet-facing host or system to initially access a network.

attack.mitre.org →

Why these techniques?

Remote unauthenticated heap buffer overflow enabling arbitrary code execution over the network in applications using the vulnerable library directly maps to exploitation of public-facing applications.

Confidence: HIGH · MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise v18.1

NVD Description

There exists a heap buffer overflow vulnerable in Abseil-cpp. The sized constructors, reserve(), and rehash() methods of absl::{flat,node}hash{set,map} did not impose an upper bound on their size argument. As a result, it was possible for a caller to pass a…

very large size that would cause an integer overflow when computing the size of the container's backing store, and a subsequent out-of-bounds memory write. Subsequent accesses to the container might also access out-of-bounds memory. We recommend upgrading past commit 5a0e2cb5e3958dd90bb8569a2766622cb74d90c1

Deeper analysisAI

CVE-2025-0838 is a heap buffer overflow vulnerability in the Abseil-cpp library (CWE-190: Integer Overflow or Wraparound). It affects the sized constructors, reserve(), and rehash() methods of absl::flat_hash_set, absl::flat_hash_map, absl::node_hash_set, and absl::node_hash_map. These methods failed to impose an upper bound on the size argument, enabling a caller to supply an excessively large value. This triggers an integer overflow when calculating the container's backing store size, leading to an out-of-bounds memory write, with subsequent container accesses potentially causing additional out-of-bounds reads or writes.

A remote, unauthenticated attacker can exploit this vulnerability over the network with low attack complexity and no user interaction required (CVSS v3.1: 9.8/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H). By passing a crafted large size argument to the vulnerable methods, the attacker induces the overflow and out-of-bounds write, which could result in arbitrary code execution, data corruption, or denial of service through memory corruption in applications relying on these Abseil-cpp hash container implementations.

Mitigation involves upgrading Abseil-cpp past commit 5a0e2cb5e3958dd90bb8569a2766622cb74d90c1, as detailed in the project's GitHub commit. Debian LTS has also announced updates addressing this issue in affected packages.