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CVE-2026-72237

Updated on 15 Aug 2026

Severity

5.5 Medium severity

Details

CVSS score
5.5
Links
NISTCIRCLRHELUbuntu

Overview

About vulnerability

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

perf/x86/amd/brs: Fix kernel address leakage

A user-only branch stack can contain branches that originate from the kernel. As a result, kernel addresses are exposed to user space even when PERF_SAMPLE_BRANCH_USER is requested. On AMD processors supporting X86_FEATURE_BRS (Zen 3 only), perf can still report entries such as SYSRET/interrupt returns for which the branch-from addresses are in the kernel.

E.g.

$ perf record -j any,u -c 4000 -e branch-brs -o - –
perf bench syscall basic –loop 1000 |
perf script -i - -F brstack|tr ’ ’ ‘\n’|
grep -E ‘0x[89a-f][0-9a-f]{15}’

… 0xffffffff810001c4/0x72e2e32955eb/-/-/-/0//- 0xffffffff810001c4/0x72e2d94a9821/-/-/-/0//- 0xffffffff810001c4/0x72e2d94ffa1b/-/-/-/0//- …

BRS provides no hardware branch filtering, so privilege level filtering is performed entirely in software. However, amd_brs_match_plm() only validates the branch-to address against the requested privilege levels. For branches from the kernel to user space, the branch-from address is left unchecked and is leaked. Extend the software filter to also validate the branch-from address, so that any branch record whose branch-from address is in the kernel is dropped when PERF_SAMPLE_BRANCH_USER is requested.

Details

Affected product:
AlmaLinux 9.2 ESU , CentOS 8.4 ELS , CentOS 8.5 ELS , CentOS Stream 8 ELS , Debian 10 ELS , TuxCare 9.6 ESU , TuxCare 9.8 ESU
Affected packages:
linux @ 4.19.0 (+6 more)

Fixes

KernelCare state

Live-patch status from KernelCare for each operating system.

Operating system Status Covered kernels
Debian 12 Will Not Fix
43 kernels
  • 6.1.38-1
  • 6.1.38-2
  • 6.1.38-4
  • 6.1.52-1
  • 6.1.55-1
  • 6.1.64-1
  • 6.1.66-1
  • 6.1.69-1
  • 6.1.76-1
  • 6.1.27-1
  • 6.1.67-1
  • 6.1.85-1
  • 6.1.90-1
  • 6.1.94-1
  • 6.1.99-1
  • 6.1.106-3
  • 6.1.112-1
  • 6.1.115-1
  • 6.1.119-1
  • 6.1.123-1
  • 6.1.128-1
  • 6.1.124-1
  • 6.1.129-1
  • 6.1.133-1
  • 6.1.135-1
  • 6.1.137-1
  • 6.1.140-1
  • 6.1.139-1
  • 6.1.147-1
  • 6.1.148-1
  • 6.1.153-1
  • 6.1.158-1
  • 6.1.159-1
  • 6.1.162-1
  • 6.1.164-1
  • 6.1.170-1
  • 6.1.170-3
  • 6.1.172-1
  • 6.1.174-1
  • 6.1.170-2
  • 6.1.176-1
  • 6.1.177-1
  • 6.1.180-1
Debian 13 Will Not Fix
13 kernels
  • 6.12.85-1
  • 6.12.86-1
  • 6.12.88-1
  • 6.12.74-2
  • 6.12.73-1
  • 6.12.63-1
  • 6.12.69-1
  • 6.12.74-1
  • 6.12.90-1
  • 6.12.90-2
  • 6.12.94-1
  • 6.12.95-1
  • 6.12.96-1
Ubuntu 24.04 Planned —
Ubuntu 24.04 AWS Planned —
Ubuntu 26.04 In Rollout
2 kernels
  • 7.0.0-31.31
  • 7.0.0-34.34