published August 15, 2026
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.