CVE-2026-43416

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

powerpc, perf: Check that current->mm is alive before getting user callchain

It may happen that mm is already released, which leads to kernel panic. This adds the NULL check for current->mm, similarly to commit 20afc60f892d (x86, perf: Check that current->mm is alive before getting user callchain).

I was getting this panic when running a profiling BPF program (profile.py from bcc-tools):

[26215.051935] Kernel attempted to read user page (588) - exploit attempt? (uid: 0)
[26215.051950] BUG: Kernel NULL pointer dereference on read at 0x00000588
[26215.051952] Faulting instruction address: 0xc00000000020fac0
[26215.051957] Oops: Kernel access of bad area, sig: 11 [#1]
[...]
[26215.052049] Call Trace:
[26215.052050] [c000000061da6d30] [c00000000020fc10] perf_callchain_user_64+0x2d0/0x490 (unreliable)
[26215.052054] [c000000061da6dc0] [c00000000020f92c] perf_callchain_user+0x1c/0x30
[26215.052057] [c000000061da6de0] [c0000000005ab2a0] get_perf_callchain+0x100/0x360
[26215.052063] [c000000061da6e70] [c000000000573bc8] bpf_get_stackid+0x88/0xf0
[26215.052067] [c000000061da6ea0] [c008000000042258] bpf_prog_16d4ab9ab662f669_do_perf_event+0xf8/0x274
[...]

In addition, move storing the top-level stack entry to generic perf_callchain_user to make sure the top-evel entry is always captured, even if current->mm is NULL.

[Maddy: fixed message to avoid checkpatch format style error]

Weakness

The product dereferences a pointer that it expects to be valid but is NULL.

Affected Software

Potential Mitigations

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7e5f60b8cfc02a2b23a40a5f5fd2fa81d010e737
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/98074e16742ae87fb82e234b419783c5ffc9baea
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e9bbfb4bfa86c6b5515b868d6982ac60505d7e39