Race Condition Vulnerability in Canonical Apport Affects Sensitive Information Leakage
CVE-2025-5054

4.7MEDIUM

Key Information:

Vendor: Canonical
Status: Apport
Vendor: CVE Published:; 30 May 2025

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What is CVE-2025-5054?

CVE-2025-5054 is a race condition vulnerability found in the Canonical Apport program, which is used for managing crash reports in Ubuntu and other systems. The purpose of Apport is to facilitate the collection and reporting of information regarding application crashes to help developers identify and resolve issues efficiently. This vulnerability specifically allows local attackers to exploit the mishandling of process IDs (PIDs) during the crash reporting process. By leveraging namespaces and exploiting PID-reuse scenarios, an attacker can potentially leak sensitive information that may be contained within core dumps of crashed processes. If an unprivileged process crashes and is quickly replaced by a containerized process, Apport may forward critical data to the malicious container, risking exposure of sensitive information in violation of security protocols.

Potential impact of CVE-2025-5054

Sensitive Information Leakage: The main risk associated with CVE-2025-5054 is the potential leakage of sensitive information contained in core dumps. If an attacker can redirect crash reports to their own containerized environment, they might gain access to confidential data, application internals, or user credentials, compromising data confidentiality and integrity.
Increased Attack Surface: This vulnerability expands the attack surface for local attackers, making systems more susceptible to attacks that leverage the crashing processes. As the Apport mechanism interacts with different namespaces and containerized processes, it complicates security controls, providing avenues for exploitation.
Challenges in Remediation: Addressing this race condition involves meticulous handling of process checks in the Apport framework. Organizations may find it challenging to apply patches promptly due to the potential for broader system impacts, leading to prolonged exposure to risks until proper updates are implemented and tested.