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Fencer Vulns
medium 6.9

CVE-2026-53941 json

Inspektor Gadget Uprobe gadgets: unprivileged container's ld.so.cache causes high CPU utilization and container startup DoS

published 2026-08-19 2 mo ago modified 2026-09-30 39 d ago also EUVD-2026-78939 , GHSA-vjhx-2cqw-3q6q , GO-2026-6254

cvss
6.9
version 4.0, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.5%
EPSS 0.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 44%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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.

Patch / fix

  • go github.com/inspektor-gadget/inspektor-gadget 0.53.1
  • linuxfoundation inspektor_gadget 0.53.1
  • govulncheck-vulndb SLES for SAP applications 16.0, SLES 16.0 0.0.20260827T195228-160000.1.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2026:23625-1

  • kubectl-retina openSUSE Tumbleweed 1.3.1-1.1
  • govulncheck-vulndb openSUSE Leap 16.0 0.0.20260827T195228-160000.1.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2026:12297-1openSUSE-SU-2026:21761-1

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2026-53941 updated cvss 5.5

github.com/inspektor-gadget/inspektor-gadget: Inspektor Gadget: Denial of Service due to crafted ld.so.cache file

  • Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
yes
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
54 d ago

Exploit prediction

0.52% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 44% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 4.0 6.9 CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
CNA 4.0 6.9 CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
go github.com/inspektor-gadget/inspektor-gadget
>=0.27.0, <0.53.1
0.53.1

Affected products

  • inspektor-gadget inspektor-gadget

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-770 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling
  • CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

CPEs and fixed versions use Anchore's correction of NVD's data: Added CPE configurations because not yet analyzed by NVD.