CVE-2026-98589

About vulnerability

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

bpf: Reject pkt arguments in mutating subprogs

The verifier tracks changes in how PTR_TO_PACKET registers' bounds are modified across subprog boundaries. PTR_TO_PACKET registers are actually passed as PTR_TO_MEM, which is assumed valid for the entire call. This is not the case with packet memory, where a pskb_* call may invalidate its memory region.

Reject BPF code that passes PTR_TO_PACKET pointers to subprogs that may mutate a packet. We cannot pass the pointer as a true PTR_TO_PACKET because we would also need to somehow pass the PTR_TO_PACKET_META or PTR_TO_PACKET_END to the subprog. Since we cannot avoid representing the pointer in the subprog as PTR_TO_MEM, only permit it if the subprog is guaranteed not to mutate the packet.

Affected product:

AlmaLinux 9.2 ESU , Amazon Linux 2 ELS , CentOS 6 ELS , CentOS 7 ELS , CentOS 8.4 ELS , CentOS 8.5 ELS , CentOS Stream 8 ELS , CloudLinux 7 ELS , Debian 10 ELS , Debian 11 ELS , Oracle Linux 6 ELS , Oracle Linux 7 ELS , RHEL 7 ELS , TuxCare 9.6 ESU , TuxCare 9.8 ESU , Ubuntu 16.04 ELS , Ubuntu 18.04 ELS , Ubuntu 20.04 ELS

Affected packages:

linux @ 5.10.259 (+19 more)

Live-patch status from KernelCare for each operating system.