CVE-2026-98642

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

bpf: Fix UAF due to concurrent consumption of ttrace lists in alloc_bulk

Syzkaller repeatedly triggered UAF splats related to nodes in waiting_for_gp_ttrace within the bpf memalloc:

BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in llist_del_first+0x85/0x110 lib/llist.c:61 Read of size 8 at addr ffff8881572cd080 by task syz.4.470/5112 … llist_del_first+0x85/0x110 lib/llist.c:61 alloc_bulk+0x193/0x460 kernel/bpf/memalloc.c:229 bpf_mem_refill+0x386/0x560 kernel/bpf/memalloc.c:436

Freed by task 14: … __free_rcu kernel/bpf/memalloc.c:281 [inline] __free_rcu_tasks_trace+0x48/0xd0 kernel/bpf/memalloc.c:291 rcu_tasks_invoke_cbs+0x1ec/0x3e0 kernel/rcu/tasks.h:571 rcu_tasks_one_gp+0x13d/0x220 kernel/rcu/tasks.h:621 rcu_tasks_kthread+0xf3/0x120 kernel/rcu/tasks.h:651

The reason is that the UAF occurs after the RCU Tasks Trace GP expires: when the __free_rcu() callback runs, there is no synchronization protecting llist_del_all() against concurrent alloc_bulk() operating on waiting_for_gp_ttrace, leading to the race condition below:

CPU0 CPU1 __free_rcu (RCU Tasks Trace callback) alloc_bulk llist_del_first(&c->waiting_for_gp_ttrace) entry = smp_load_acquire(&head->first); do { if (entry == NULL) return NULL; free_all(llist_del_all(&c->waiting_for_gp_ttrace)) llist_for_each_safe(pos, t, llnode) free_one(pos); next = READ_ONCE(entry->next); <– trigger UAF } while (!try_cmpxchg(&head->first, &entry, next));

In addition, there is also a theoretical race condition on the free_by_rcu_ttrace list. This race requires two preconditions: an in-flight Tasks Trace GP keeping c->call_rcu_ttrace_in_progress == 1, and concurrent cross-CPU frees repopulating c->free_by_rcu_ttrace with new nodes. Under these conditions, the following scenario triggers UAF:

// CPU0 // irq work is still busy (on PREEMPT_RT) alloc_bulk() llist_del_first(&c->free_by_rcu_ttrace) entry = smp_load_acquire(&head->first); do { if (entry == NULL) return NULL;

    // CPU1
    bpf_mem_alloc_destroy()
      WRITE_ONCE(c->draining, true)
      // wait for CPU0
      irq_work_sync()

            // CPU2
            do_call_rcu_ttrace(tgt(CPU0))
              if (c->draining) {
                llist_del_all(&c->free_by_rcu_ttrace)
                free_all()
              }

// CPU0 continue next = READ_ONCE(entry->next); <– trigger UAF while (!try_cmpxchg(&head->first, &entry, next));

Fix this by introducing a raw spinlock to synchronize the concurrent consumption on waiting_for_gp_ttrace and free_by_rcu_ttrace.

Affected Software

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/1c21452d02eec2f008e2c5535820f85adbd7587a
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/1d6581b544a88cf4348c2fb60dcb50ad63f012da
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a0e150a118025a05c8662c536ba2a865da86419c
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/f101602415fb39a58941bec444df65634d5a6844