Local privilege escalation in make-initrd-ng

published 2025-04-15 18 mo ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2025-10983

cvss: 8.8; version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 0.2%; EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 8%
public exploits: 0; none known

make-initrd-ng is a tool for copying binaries and their dependencies. Local privilege escalation affecting all NixOS users. With systemd.shutdownRamfs.enable enabled (the default) a local user is able to create a program that will be executed by root during shutdown. Patches exist for NixOS 24.11 and 25.05 / unstable. As a workaround, set systemd.shutdownRamfs.enable = false;.

Patch / fix

links 2

github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs@b175901 commit
github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs@fbf76bf commit

CISA SSVC

Exploitation: none
Automatable: no
Technical impact: total
Assessed: 18 mo ago (2025-04-15)

Exploit prediction

0.19% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 8% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
CNA	3.1	8.8	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected products

NixOS nixpkgs

Classification

Weakness

CWE-378 Creation of Temporary File With Insecure Permissions
CWE-379 Creation of Temporary File in Directory with Insecure Permissions

References

Sources

CVE List CVE-2025-32438
NVD CVE-2025-32438

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

Summary