Bug 2534018 (CVE-2026-44778)

Summary: CVE-2026-44778 github.com/inspektor-gadget/inspektor-gadget: Inspektor Gadget: Denial of Service via crafted ELF binary
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
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Priority: medium    
Version: unspecifiedKeywords: Security
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Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in Inspektor Gadget. An unprivileged container can trigger a denial of service in the privileged Inspektor Gadget process. This occurs when a custom gadget with an eBPF section attaches to a specially crafted ELF (Executable and Linkable Format) binary. The USDT (Userland Statically Defined Tracing) note parser fails to validate input, leading to out-of-bounds memory access and potential memory exhaustion, ultimately crashing the process.
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-09-15 17:34:24 UTC
Inspektor Gadget is a set of tools and framework for data collection and system inspection on Kubernetes clusters and Linux hosts using eBPF. From 0.28.0 until 0.53.1, the USDT note parser in pkg/uprobetracer/usdt.go can allow an unprivileged container to crash or exhaust the memory of the privileged Inspektor Gadget process when a custom gadget containing a SEC("usdt/...") eBPF section attaches to a crafted ELF binary. The getUsdtInfo() function reads the .note.stapsdt section without validating that DescSize is large enough for three address fields, allowing an out-of-bounds slice operation to panic, and it uses untrusted NameSize and DescSize values for allocations that can consume gigabytes of memory. The parser also invokes debug/elf without panic recovery, allowing other malformed ELF structures to terminate the process. No gadget shipped by Inspektor Gadget uses USDT probes, so only deployments using custom USDT gadgets are affected, and the demonstrated impact is denial of service rather than code execution or privilege escalation. This issue is fixed in version 0.53.1.