CVE-2026-44778

Inspektor Gadget: Unprivileged container can crash USDT note parser via crafted ELF

LOW
2.9
CVSS Score
Published: September 15, 2026 at 05:00 PM UTC
Updated: September 30, 2026 at 05:43 PM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorGadget

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Severity
LOW2.9
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.6%
SSVC
No known exploit

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

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

v < 0.53.1
Affected range stops below 0.53.1, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement

Remediation

No guide yet

No remediation guidance has been written for this CVE yet, and no fixed version or vendor advisory is recorded against it.

SSVC — Action Prioritization

SSVCNo known exploitNot automatablePartial impact

SSVC signals action urgency (what to patch first), separate from CVSS which measures severity.

CVSS

2.9LOWGitHub_M
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusAWAITING ANALYSIS
CWE
CWE-20

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