Overview
About vulnerability
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
bpf: reject negative CO-RE accessor indices in bpf_core_parse_spec()
CO-RE accessor strings are colon-separated indices that describe a path from a root BTF type to a target field, e.g. “0:1:2” walks through nested struct members. bpf_core_parse_spec() parses each component with sscanf("%d"), so negative values like -1 are silently accepted. The subsequent bounds checks (access_idx >= btf_vlen(t)) only guard the upper bound and always pass for negative values because C integer promotion converts the __u16 btf_vlen result to int, making the comparison (int)(-1) >= (int)(N) false for any positive N.
When -1 reaches btf_member_bit_offset() it gets cast to u32 0xffffffff, producing an out-of-bounds read far past the members array. A crafted BPF program with a negative CO-RE accessor on any struct that exists in vmlinux BTF (e.g. task_struct) crashes the kernel deterministically during BPF_PROG_LOAD on any system with CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO_BTF=y (default on major distributions). The bug is reachable with CAP_BPF:
BUG: unable to handle page fault for address: ffffed11818b6626 #PF: supervisor read access in kernel mode #PF: error_code(0x0000) - not-present page Oops: Oops: 0000 [#1] SMP KASAN NOPTI CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 85 Comm: poc Not tainted 7.0.0-rc6 #18 PREEMPT(full) RIP: 0010:bpf_core_parse_spec (tools/lib/bpf/relo_core.c:354) RAX: 00000000ffffffff Call Trace: <TASK> bpf_core_calc_relo_insn (tools/lib/bpf/relo_core.c:1321) bpf_core_apply (kernel/bpf/btf.c:9507) check_core_relo (kernel/bpf/verifier.c:19475) bpf_check (kernel/bpf/verifier.c:26031) bpf_prog_load (kernel/bpf/syscall.c:3089) __sys_bpf (kernel/bpf/syscall.c:6228) </TASK>
CO-RE accessor indices are inherently non-negative (struct member index, array element index, or enumerator index), so reject them immediately after parsing.
Details
- Affected product:
- AlmaLinux 9.2 ESU , Amazon Linux 2 ELS , Oracle Linux 7 ELS , TuxCare 9.6 ESU , Ubuntu 20.04 ELS
- Affected packages:
- linux-meta @ 5.4.0 (+5 more)
Fixes
KernelCare state
Live-patch status from KernelCare for each operating system.
| Operating system | Status | Covered kernels |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon Linux 2023 | Released |
57 kernels
|
| Debian 12 | Released |
40 kernels
|
| Debian 13 | Released |
10 kernels
|
| Ubuntu 22.04 | Planned | — |
| Ubuntu 24.04 | Released |
46 kernels
|