CVE-2026-53941

MediumCVSS 6.9

Published: 15/09/2026(UTC)Updated: 30/09/2026(UTC)Translated: 16/09/2026(UTC)NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk

0.52%

42th percentile - higher than 42% of all known CVEs

Summary

Inspektor Gadget from version 0.27.0 to 0.53.1 has a vulnerability in the uprobe library resolver that can allow an unprivileged container to consume excessive CPU and block other containers from starting by supplying a crafted /etc/ld.so.cache file while an uprobe-based gadget is active. The parser in pkg/uprobetracer/ldcache_parser.go trusts EntryCount enough to perform excessive iteration, computes cache1Len with overflowing uint32 arithmetic, and repeatedly calls readStringFromBytes, where byte-by-byte immutable string concatenation produces quadratic work.

Risk Assessment

An attacker can delay startup of new containers for roughly a minute, prevent Docker from starting other containers, and degrade monitoring, impacting availability and performance of the cluster.

Recommendation

It is recommended to upgrade Inspektor Gadget to version 0.53.1 or later, which includes the fix.

Other vulnerabilities in Inspektor Gadget

CVE-2026-44778Low
Inspektor Gadget from 0.28.0 until 0.53.1 has a flaw in the USDT note parser (pkg/uprobetracer/usdt.go). When a custom gadget with a SEC("usdt/...") eBPF section attaches to a crafted ELF binary, an unprivileged container can trigger an out-of-bounds panic or consume gigabytes of memory, crashing or exhausting the privileged Inspektor Gadget process.

Original NVD description (English source)

Inspektor Gadget is a set of tools and framework for data collection and system inspection on Kubernetes clusters and Linux hosts using eBPF. From 0.27.0 until 0.53.1, the uprobe library resolver can allow an unprivileged container to consume excessive CPU and block other containers from starting by supplying a crafted /etc/ld.so.cache file while an uprobe-based gadget is active. The parser in pkg/uprobetracer/ldcache_parser.go trusts EntryCount enough to perform excessive iteration, computes cache1Len with overflowing uint32 arithmetic, and repeatedly calls readStringFromBytes in pkg/uprobetracer/bytes.go, where byte-by-byte immutable string concatenation produces quadratic work. While this processing occurs, pkg/container-hook holds the fanotify container-start pause, allowing a crafted cache to delay startup for roughly a minute, prevent Docker from starting other containers, and degrade monitoring. Processing caches from already-running containers can still consume CPU but does not hold the new-container startup pause, and the advisory establishes no confidentiality or integrity impact. This issue is fixed in version 0.53.1.

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS