Critical Linux Vulnerabilities in Apport and systemd-coredump Expose Sensitive Data

Introduction

Two newly disclosed vulnerabilities have raised alarms across the Linux community, impacting core system components responsible for crash reporting and debugging. Discovered by the Qualys Threat Research Unit (TRU), these vulnerabilities affect Apport (Ubuntu’s crash handler) and systemd-coredump (used in Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora). The risks are far-reaching, especially for organizations relying on these distributions for secure operations. These bugs, if exploited, could allow attackers to access highly sensitive data like password hashes and potentially other private information from system memory snapshots. Here’s a closer look at the technical details, the risks, and expert insights from the Undercode team.

🚨 Vulnerability Summary

Security researchers at Qualys have uncovered two race-condition vulnerabilities in Apport and systemd-coredump, core components of Ubuntu and Red Hat-based systems respectively. These tools are used to manage and log core dumps—files generated when applications crash, which contain a snapshot of their memory at the time of failure. Although intended for debugging, these dumps may contain sensitive user data such as passwords and encryption keys, and are normally protected from regular users.

The two vulnerabilities are:

CVE-2025-5054: Affects Apport (Ubuntu’s crash handler).

CVE-2025-4598: Affects systemd-coredump (default in Fedora and RHEL 9/10).

Both vulnerabilities are rated with a CVSS score of 4.7 and are local information-disclosure bugs. They occur due to race conditions—a flaw that allows a local attacker to quickly replace a crashed SUID (Set User ID) process with another one before the system finishes analyzing it. This exploitation method gives the attacker access to the core dump, which could contain highly confidential data.

Qualys demonstrated real-world proof-of-concepts (PoCs), showing how attackers could extract password hashes from the /etc/shadow file by targeting the unix_chkpwd process.

Affected systems include:

Ubuntu: All versions from 16.04 to 24.04 (Apport)

Fedora: Versions 40 and 41

RHEL: Versions 9 and 10

SUSE and Arch Linux: Also potentially affected via systemd-coredump

Debian: Not affected by default settings

Temporary Mitigation:

Until patches are fully deployed, admins can set /proc/sys/fs/suid_dumpable to 0, disabling core dumps for SUID programs and minimizing the exposure risk.

According to the advisory, these bugs could result in:

Sensitive data leakage

Potential regulatory non-compliance

Reputation and operational damage

🧠 What Undercode Say:

These findings highlight a growing concern in modern Linux environments: security flaws in system debugging utilities, often overlooked due to their background role. Here’s a deeper breakdown:

🔍 Technical Analysis

1. Race Conditions in Core Dump Handlers: These types of vulnerabilities stem from timing issues during process management. Exploiting them requires precision but is not out of reach for skilled attackers.
2. SUID Program Targeting: The use of SUID (which runs with elevated privileges) makes these bugs especially critical. Attackers don’t need remote access—just local system presence—which could include compromised users or insiders.
3. Exploitation via /proc: The attack relies on replacing /proc/pid/ data of the original crashed SUID process with another before analysis completes. This allows the extraction of the second process’s data instead.

🔒 Security Implications

Core dumps can hold not just passwords but encryption keys, API tokens, and customer data. This presents a high risk for data exfiltration.
Systems with default debugging enabled become inadvertent goldmines for attackers if physical or local access is gained.

🛠 Operational and Compliance Impact

Enterprises, especially those in regulated sectors (finance, healthcare, etc.), are exposed to compliance violations if private data is leaked.
Failure to address these issues swiftly could lead to downtime, loss of trust, and audit failures.

🚧 Recommended Actions

Immediate patching is essential once distributions release updates.

Meanwhile, disable core dumps for SUID processes using:

“`bash

echo 0 | sudo tee /proc/sys/fs/suid_dumpable

“`

Strengthen access controls around system files and enable advanced intrusion detection systems.
Conduct internal audits to determine if any core dump access has occurred historically and monitor /var/lib/systemd/coredump.

The Undercode team also notes that system tools like Apport and systemd-coredump are often left unreviewed in threat modeling exercises. It’s a reminder to include all services in your security assessments, not just those exposed to the internet.

✅ Fact Checker Results

🧠 These are local vulnerabilities—remote exploitation is not possible without local access.
🛡️ Debian remains unaffected by default due to its differing core dump policies.
🔧 A patch is not yet fully rolled out—temporary mitigation is advised immediately.

🔮 Prediction

🚀 Expect major Linux distributions to push updates quickly over the next few weeks. Security teams in enterprise environments will likely prioritize these patches, especially where compliance standards like HIPAA or PCI-DSS are in place. Given the growing sophistication of Linux-based attacks, audits of debugging tools and memory leak detection will likely become more common in 2025 security strategies. The awareness around local privilege escalation through system internals is clearly rising—prepare for more disclosures like this in the near future.

References:

Reported By: securityaffairs.com
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