High · published September 17, 2026
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
apparmor: fix integer overflow in verify_tags() bounds check
verify_tags() validates the tagset table unpacked from a policy blob.
For each set it reads a count and checks that advancing the index by
that count stays inside sets.table[]:
u32 cnt = tags->sets.table[i];
if (i+cnt >= tags->sets.size) {
i, cnt and sets.size are all u32, so i+cnt is evaluated modulo 2^32.
sets.table[] is filled by unpack_tagsets() with aa_unpack_u32(), so
every entry is a raw unbounded 32-bit word taken from the policy blob,
and verify_tags() is the function that is supposed to validate it. A
count close to U32_MAX makes the sum wrap to a small value, the guard
passes, and the inner loop then walks sets.table[++i] past the end of
the kcalloc(size, sizeof(u32)) allocation.
Note that sets.size is bounded by 65535, because unpack_tagsets() reads
it with aa_unpack_array() as a u16, so the wrap cannot be reached by
growing the table; it is reached purely through the attacker-supplied
count.
With sets.size = 2 and sets.table = { 0, 0xffffffff }:
i = 0: cnt = 0, guard 0 + 0 >= 2 is false, inner loop does not run
i = 1: cnt = 0xffffffff, guard (1 + 0xffffffff) mod 2^32 == 0 >= 2 is
false, so the guard is bypassed and the inner loop reads
sets.table[2] -- one element past a two element allocation
The walk continues until an out-of-bounds value happens to be >=
hdrs.size or the access faults, so a crafted policy yields an
out-of-bounds read on the policy load path
(aa_replace_profiles -> aa_unpack -> unpack_policydb -> unpack_tags ->
verify_tags). unpack_tags() runs before the perms and DFA tables are
unpacked, so no other table needs to be well formed to reach it.
Policy load is gated by aa_may_manage_policy(), which checks
CAP_MAC_ADMIN relative to the subject's own user namespace rather than
the init user namespace, so with the default
unprivileged_userns_apparmor_policy=1 the path is reachable from an
unprivileged task in a matched-level nested namespace, not only by a
globally privileged one.
Perform the addition in u64 so that it cannot wrap, restoring the
intended i + cnt < sets.size guarantee.