The vulnerability is a null pointer dereference in the gssproxy daemon, triggered when a GSSX_INIT_SEC_CONTEXT request arrives without a target_name field. The daemon dereferences a NULL pointer and crashes, which results in a denial of service. Because the request does not require authentication, any local user can send the malicious request through the Unix socket and cause the crash. This is a classic null pointer dereference identified as CWE‑476. The crash persists until the daemon is restarted, leading to a prolonged outage of Kerberized NFS and IdM, which rely on gssproxy for authentication.

The affected systems are Red Hat Enterprise Linux major releases 7, 8, 9 and 10, as well as Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4. The CVE does not specify a particular minor or patch level, so all versions of these distributions that contain the vulnerable gssproxy implementation are impacted.

The likely attack vector is a local user with access to the gssproxy Unix socket. Based on the description, this local access requirement holds; there is no network‑exposed vector. The CVSS score of 5.5 indicates moderate severity. Since the EPSS score is not available, the exploitation probability is uncertain, but repeated crashes can be achieved by local attackers. The vulnerability is not listed in CISA KEV, indicating no known active exploitation. The world‑accessible socket increases risk in trusted environments, meaning that excessive local user privileges can amplify the impact.