CVE-2025-32438: Local privilege escalation in make-initrd-ng

Severity: high (CVSS 8.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2025-04-15 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-378

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;.

Affected products

NixOS nixpkgs: before b17590193d8e5697000c23c66afcf11e1753734d; before fbf76bf72b161b9f4ab97704a8258776d5f3ffba

References

https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/commit/b17590193d8e5697000c23c66afcf11e1753734d
https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/commit/fbf76bf72b161b9f4ab97704a8258776d5f3ffba
https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/security/advisories/GHSA-m7pq-h9p4-8rr4

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