CVE-2026-53941

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

MEDIUM
6.9
CVSS Score
Published: September 15, 2026 at 05:02 PM UTC
Updated: September 30, 2026 at 05:43 PM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorGadget

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Severity
MEDIUM6.9
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.5%
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 0.27.0 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.

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 exploitAutomatablePartial impact

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

CVSS

6.9MEDIUMGitHub_M
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusAWAITING ANALYSIS
CWE
CWE-770

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