CVE-2026-46250

About vulnerability

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

MIPS: Work around LLVM bug when gp is used as global register variable

On MIPS, __current_thread_info is defined as global register variable locating in $gp, and is simply assigned with new address during kernel relocation.

This however is broken with LLVM, which always restores $gp if it finds $gp is clobbered in any form, including when intentionally through a global register variable. This is against GCC’s documentation[1], which requires a callee-saved register used as global register variable not to be restored if it’s clobbered.

As a result, $gp will continue to point to the unrelocated kernel after the epilog of relocate_kernel(), leading to an early crash in init_idle,

[ 0.000000] CPU 0 Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address 0000000000000000, epc == ffffffff81afada8, ra == ffffffff81afad90 [ 0.000000] Oops[#1]: [ 0.000000] CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 0 Comm: swapper Tainted: G W 6.19.0-rc5-00262-gd3eeb99bbc99-dirty #188 VOLUNTARY [ 0.000000] Tainted: [W]=WARN [ 0.000000] Hardware name: loongson,loongson64v-4core-virtio [ 0.000000] $ 0 : 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000001 0000000000000000 [ 0.000000] $ 4 : ffffffff80b80ec0 ffffffff80b53d48 0000000000000000 00000000000f4240 [ 0.000000] $ 8 : 0000000000000100 ffffffff81d82f80 ffffffff81d82f80 0000000000000001 [ 0.000000] $12 : 0000000000000000 ffffffff81776f58 00000000000005da 0000000000000002 [ 0.000000] $16 : ffffffff80b80e40 0000000000000000 ffffffff80b81614 9800000005dfbe80 [ 0.000000] $20 : 00000000540000e0 ffffffff81980000 0000000000000000 ffffffff80f81c80 [ 0.000000] $24 : 0000000000000a26 ffffffff8114fb90 [ 0.000000] $28 : ffffffff80b50000 ffffffff80b53d40 0000000000000000 ffffffff81afad90 [ 0.000000] Hi : 0000000000000000 [ 0.000000] Lo : 0000000000000000 [ 0.000000] epc : ffffffff81afada8 init_idle+0x130/0x270 [ 0.000000] ra : ffffffff81afad90 init_idle+0x118/0x270 [ 0.000000] Status: 540000e2 KX SX UX KERNEL EXL [ 0.000000] Cause : 00000008 (ExcCode 02) [ 0.000000] BadVA : 0000000000000000 [ 0.000000] PrId : 00006305 (ICT Loongson-3) [ 0.000000] Process swapper (pid: 0, threadinfo=(ptrval), task=(ptrval), tls=0000000000000000) [ 0.000000] Stack : 9800000005dfbf00 ffffffff8178e950 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 [ 0.000000] 0000000000000000 ffffffff81970000 000000000000003f ffffffff810a6528 [ 0.000000] 0000000000000001 9800000005dfbe80 9800000005dfbf00 ffffffff81980000 [ 0.000000] ffffffff810a6450 ffffffff81afb6c0 0000000000000000 ffffffff810a2258 [ 0.000000] ffffffff81d82ec8 ffffffff8198d010 ffffffff81b67e80 ffffffff8197dd98 [ 0.000000] ffffffff81d81c80 ffffffff81930000 0000000000000040 0000000000000000 [ 0.000000] 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 [ 0.000000] 0000000000000000 000000000000009e ffffffff9fc01000 0000000000000000 [ 0.000000] 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 [ 0.000000] 0000000000000000 ffffffff81ae86dc ffffffff81b3c741 0000000000000002 [ 0.000000] … [ 0.000000] Call Trace: [ 0.000000] [] init_idle+0x130/0x270 [ 0.000000] [] sched_init+0x5c8/0x6c0 [ 0.000000] [] start_kernel+0x27c/0x7a8

This bug has been reported to LLVM[2] and affects version from (at least) 18 to 21. Let’s work around this by using inline assembly to assign $gp before a fix is widely available.

Affected product:

Ubuntu 20.04 ELS

Affected packages:

linux-meta @ 5.4.0 (+1 more)

Live-patch status from KernelCare for each operating system.