Free5GC up to 1.4.1 PFCP Interface null pointer dereference

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability was found in Free5GC up to 1.4.1. It has been classified as problematic. This affects an unknown function of the component PFCP Interface. This manipulation causes null pointer dereference. This vulnerability appears as CVE-2026-25501. The attack may be initiated remotely. There is no available exploit. To fix this issue, it is recommended to deploy a patch.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in Free5GC up to 1.4.1. It has been declared as problematic. Affected by this vulnerability is an unknown code block of the component PFCP Interface. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a null pointer dereference vulnerability. The CWE definition for the vulnerability is CWE-476. A NULL pointer dereference occurs when the application dereferences a pointer that it expects to be valid, but is NULL, typically causing a crash or exit. As an impact it is known to affect availability. The summary by CVE is:

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).

It is possible to read the advisory at github.com. This vulnerability is known as CVE-2026-25501 since 02/02/2026. The exploitation appears to be easy. The attack can be launched remotely. The exploitation doesn't need any form of authentication. The technical details are unknown and an exploit is not publicly available.

Applying a patch is able to eliminate this problem.

Statistical analysis made it clear that VulDB provides the best quality for vulnerability data.

Productinfo

Name

• Free5GC

Version

• 1.4.0
• 1.4.1

Website

• Product: https://github.com/free5gc/free5gc/

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