Vulnerability · Published Sep 15, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M
CVE-2026-44778Inspektor Gadget: Unprivileged container can crash USDT note parser via crafted ELF
Low 2.9
In plain English
A low-severity improper input validation in inspektor-gadget from inspektor-gadget. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.6% (higher than 50% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.
Official description
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.
Affected packages & fixed versions
| Ecosystem | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Go | github.com/inspektor-gadget/inspektor-gadget | 0.53.1 | GHSA-7cfq-5mhv-jrp9 |
| Go | github.com/inspektor-gadget/inspektor-gadget | 0.53.1 | GO-2026-5214 |
Affected products (as reported)
| Vendor | Product | Versions |
|---|---|---|
| inspektor-gadget | inspektor-gadget | >= 0.28.0, < 0.53.1 |
Weakness: CWE-20 · Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:P
References
- https://github.com/inspektor-gadget/inspektor-gadget/security/advisories/GHSA-7cfq-5mhv-jrp9 x_refsource_CONFIRM
- https://github.com/inspektor-gadget/inspektor-gadget/pull/5547 x_refsource_MISC
- https://github.com/inspektor-gadget/inspektor-gadget/commit/27263e50d6287891eee4d9a1cfae62681260e1a2 x_refsource_MISC
- https://github.com/inspektor-gadget/inspektor-gadget/commit/aaffacc6a9e43b4de5ce8f8148e6c2d9a1ea6026 x_refsource_MISC
- https://github.com/inspektor-gadget/inspektor-gadget/releases/tag/v0.53.1 x_refsource_MISC