High · published August 15, 2026
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
bpf: Cancel special fields on map value recycle
Map update and delete paths currently call bpf_obj_free_fields() when a
value is being replaced or recycled. That makes field destruction depend
on the context of the update/delete operation. For tracing programs this
can include NMI context, where referenced kptr destructors, uptr
unpinning, and graph root destruction are not generally safe.
Introduce bpf_obj_cancel_fields() for the reusable-value path. It only
performs NMI-safe cleanup for timer, workqueue, and task_work fields.
Fields that need full destruction are left attached to the recycled value
and are destroyed by the final cleanup path instead.
Switch array and hashtab update/delete/recycle paths to this cancel
helper. Keep bpf_obj_free_fields() for final map destruction and for
bpf_mem_alloc destructors. Preallocated hashtabs do not have allocator
destructors, so teardown continues to walk the normal and extra elements
and fully destroy their fields.
This deliberately relaxes the eager-free semantics of map update/delete
for special fields. Programs that relied on a recycled map slot becoming
empty immediately after update/delete were relying on behavior that
cannot be implemented safely from every BPF execution context without
offloading arbitrary destructors.
There is a chance this change breaks programs making assumptions
regarding the eager freeing of fields. If so, we can relax semantics to
cancellation only when irqs_disabled() is true in the future. However,
theoretically, map values that get reused eagerly already have weaker
guarantees as parallel users can recreate freed fields before the new
element becomes visible again.