CVE-2026-44778
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…
Does this matter?
Lower severity and a low EPSS score (0.63%). Track it; it rarely justifies an emergency change on its own.
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.
- CVSS 4.0
- 2.9 LOWCVSS: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/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/M
- EPSS
- 0.63% probability · 50th percentile
- Public exploits
- None in Exploit-DB
- CISA KEV
- Not listed
- Weakness
- CWE-20
- Source
- security-advisories@github.com
EPSS 0.6% since 26 October 2026; no change recorded yet. Points are recorded when the score first appears and whenever it moves by a percentage point or more.
References
- https://github.com/inspektor-gadget/inspektor-gadget/commit/27263e50d6287891eee4d9a1cfae62681260e1a2
- https://github.com/inspektor-gadget/inspektor-gadget/commit/aaffacc6a9e43b4de5ce8f8148e6c2d9a1ea6026
- https://github.com/inspektor-gadget/inspektor-gadget/pull/5547
- https://github.com/inspektor-gadget/inspektor-gadget/releases/tag/v0.53.1
- https://github.com/inspektor-gadget/inspektor-gadget/security/advisories/GHSA-7cfq-5mhv-jrp9
Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA, exploits from Exploit-DB. Refreshed daily. Download this record as JSON.