CVE-2025-32438 - CVE House
Back to Database
Status published High CVE-2025-32438

Local privilege escalation in make-initrd-ng

Vulnerability Description

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;.

Impact Analysis

Refer to official advisory for detailed impact metrics.

Remediation

Ensure systems are updated to the latest vendor-supplied patch levels.

THREAT MONITOR

Am I Vulnerable?

Launch our assessment wizard to check if your infrastructure is exposed to • CVE-2025-32438

Credits & Attribution

No credits recorded in the NVD database.

References

More from NixOS

View All →
CVE-2025-64766
NixOS has hardcoded credentials in Onlyoffice module
Medium 5.3
CVE-2025-54864
Hydra missing authentication when triggering evaluations through GitHub and Gitea plugins
Medium 6.9
CVE-2025-54800
Hydra persistent XSS in build metrics
High 7.1
CVE-2025-53819
Nix's privilege dropping to build user broke for macOS
High 7.9
CVE-2025-52993
A race condition in the Nix, Lix, and Guix package...
Medium 5.6

Affected Vendor

Affected Software

nixpkgs
Vulnerable Versions:
< b17590193d8e5697000c23c66afcf11e1753734d, < fbf76bf72b161b9f4ab97704a8258776d5f3ffba

Timeline

Official Publish: April 15th, 2025
Last Modified: April 15th, 2025
Added to House: July 22nd, 2026

CVSS Vectors

V3: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

Weaknesses (CWE)

CWE-378 CWE-379

MITRE ATT&CK TTPs

No associated TTPs found for this vulnerability.