CVE-2025-5054 is a race condition vulnerability identified in Canonical's Apport crash reporting tool, affecting versions up to and including 2.32.0. Apport is used primarily on Ubuntu systems to handle application crashes by collecting and forwarding crash data for debugging. The vulnerability arises from improper synchronization in the function _check_global_pid_and_forward, which is responsible for determining if a crashing process resides within a container namespace. Specifically, this function was called before consistency_checks, which verifies if the crashing process has been replaced or reused via PID reuse. Due to this ordering, an attacker could exploit a race condition where a process crashes and its PID is quickly reassigned to a containerized process. This allows Apport to mistakenly forward sensitive core dump data to the container, potentially leaking sensitive information. The issue is exacerbated by the difficulty of reliably detecting PID reuse from userspace alone. To mitigate this, the patch changes the call order so that consistency_checks runs before _check_global_pid_and_forward. Additionally, forwarding of crashes to containers is now restricted to cases where the kernel provides a pidfd or if the crashing process is unprivileged (dump mode == 1). The vulnerability requires local access with low privileges and has a CVSS 3.1 score of 4.7, indicating medium severity. It impacts confidentiality but not integrity or availability, and does not require user interaction. No known exploits are reported in the wild as of publication.

For European organizations, especially those using Ubuntu or other Linux distributions that incorporate Canonical's Apport tool, this vulnerability poses a risk of sensitive information leakage from crash dumps. In environments where containerization is heavily used—such as cloud service providers, development platforms, and enterprises leveraging container orchestration—this flaw could allow a local attacker to access sensitive data from other containerized processes by exploiting PID reuse. Although the attacker must have local access, this could be achieved through compromised user accounts or insider threats. The leakage of sensitive information could include memory contents, credentials, or proprietary data, which may facilitate further attacks or data breaches. Given the widespread adoption of containers and Linux in European data centers and enterprises, the vulnerability could impact confidentiality of critical systems. However, the medium severity and requirement for local access limit the scope of impact compared to remote code execution vulnerabilities.

European organizations should promptly update Apport to a version where the fix is applied, ensuring that consistency_checks precedes _check_global_pid_and_forward and that crash forwarding to containers is restricted as per the patch. If immediate patching is not possible, organizations should restrict local access to systems running Apport, especially limiting unprivileged user accounts and container access. Monitoring for unusual crash forwarding behavior or unexpected container core dumps can help detect exploitation attempts. Additionally, kernel upgrades that provide pidfd support can reduce the risk by enabling safer crash forwarding. Organizations should also review container isolation policies and consider disabling Apport crash forwarding in containerized environments if not essential. Employing strict access controls, auditing, and user behavior analytics can further reduce the likelihood of local attackers exploiting this race condition.