Vulnerability · Published Feb 24, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M

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

Medium 6.6

In plain English

A medium-severity null pointer dereference in smf from free5gc. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.4% (higher than 30% of all known vulnerabilities).

Severity (CVSS 4.0)6.6Medium

Exploit odds (30 days)0.4%top 70.0% of all CVEs

Exploited in the wildNo reportsCISA SSVC: none

Attack toolingNoneno public tooling known

Official 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 (as reported)

Vendor	Product	Versions
free5gc	smf	<= 1.4.1

Weakness: CWE-476 · Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:U

References

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