What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-25501: free5GC SMF crash (nil pointer dereference) on PFCP SessionReportRequest when ReportType.DLDR is set but DownlinkDataReport IE is missing

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2026-02-24 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-476

Description

free5GC SMF provides Session Management Function for free5GC, an open-source project for 5th generation (5G) mobile core networks. In versions up to and including 1.4.1, SMF panics due to nil pointer dereference and the SMF process terminates. This is triggered by a malformed PFCP SessionReportRequest on the SMF PFCP (UDP/8805) interface. No known upstream fix is available, but some workarounds are available. ACL/firewall the PFCP interface so only trusted UPF IPs can reach SMF (reduce spoofing/abuse surface); drop/inspect malformed PFCP SessionReportRequest messages at the network edge where feasible, and/or add recover() around PFCP handler dispatch to avoid whole-process termination (mitigation only).

Affected products

• free5gc smf: through 1.4.1

References

• https://github.com/free5gc/free5gc/issues/805
• https://github.com/free5gc/free5gc/security/advisories/GHSA-vq85-8f6p-g9q5

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