Ubuntu core dump vulnerability, how you can fix it

When applications crash on Linux systems, they usually create a core dump file that contains the program's memory at the time of the crash. This is normal and happens to help developers troubleshoot problems. However, currently, the program responsible for creating core dumps in Ubuntu and Linux distributions based on it is Ubuntu, As the AnduinOS, is vulnerable to a new exploit.

The flaw has been reported as CVE -2025-5054 and has a CVSS score of 4,7 (MEDIUM). This flaw is inherently more difficult to exploit because it requires local access to the victim's computer. Additionally, Qualys, which discovered the flaw, provided a demonstration where it was able to leak hashed user passwords. However, the real-world risk is limited.

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How vulnerability works

Qualys found that when apport analyzes application errors, it looks to see if the process is running inside a container before performing consistency checks. If an attacker can destroy the program inside a privileged process and quickly replace it with the same process ID that is in both the mount namespace and the PID namespace, they can get apport to take the core dump via the namespace. The core dump can therefore contain sensitive information.

In addition to the attacker only being able to do this locally, they also need to have significant privileges to complete the attack.

What can you do

Canonical's security team has already released updates for apport to fix this issue in all affected Ubuntu releases. If you have automatic updates enabled, you may already have the updated version of the application.

If you are not sure, run the following command:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

If you are unable to apply all available updates for whatever reason, then you can run these commands to update only apport:

Ubuntu 20.04 and later versions:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install –only-upgrade apport python3-apport

Ubuntu 16.04 and Ubuntu 18.04:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install –only-upgrade apport python3-apport python-apport

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