CVE-2026-98043

Summary

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

bpf: Don't infer non-NULL from a pointer with an unbounded offset

reg_not_null() decides that a register holds a non-NULL value by looking at its type alone. For pointer types that allow arithmetic the type only guarantees a non-NULL base, in case of an unbound offset the runtime offset value might still add up to NULL. Consider the followng program:

r6 = bpf_map_lookup_elem(map, &0); /* present / if (r6 == 0) return 0; r7 = bpf_map_lookup_elem(map, &1); / absent, NULL at runtime / r8 = r7; r8 -= r6; / pointer - pointer: unknown scalar, -r6 / r8 <<= 1; r8 >>= 1; / any non-negative offset is accepted by / / check_reg_sane_offset_ptr() / r6 += r8; / verifier: map value; runtime: zero */ if (r7 != r6) return 0; *(u8 )(r7 + 0); / r7 is inferred non-NULL, both are zero */

At runtime both registers are zero, the comparison is true and the load faults with NULL pointer dereference.

Require the offset to be within +-BPF_MAX_VAR_OFF in reg_not_null().

Affected Software

Weaknesses

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/cb6642048739bf4ee5aa09fe465511f1e87caa63
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/67b529f521a6676cdfc78b91b0217d7eaa84216b

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