published October 18, 2026
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
bpf: Skip detached progs in trampoline images that are still in use
bpf_tramp_image_put() makes sure a trampoline image is not freed while
a task may still be running in it, but nothing similar is done for the
progs called by that image. Detach drops the last prog reference right
away and the prog is freed after grace periods, on the basis that a
task still in the traced function skips the fexit progs once the nop at
ip_after_call is patched to a jump.
That leaves out a task sleeping in a sleepable prog that runs before
the detached one, which no grace period waits for:
CPU 0 CPU 1
in image I, sleeping in prog S
detach P from I's trampoline
-> new image, bpf_tramp_image_put(I)
bpf_prog_put(P), last ref
grace periods, P freed
back from S
__bpf_prog_enter(P)
call P->bpf_func
If S and P are fexit progs the task is already past the patched jump,
and fentry only images don't have one. On x86 this is an int3 in
poisoned bpf_prog_pack memory:
Oops: int3: 0000 [#1] SMP NOPTI
CPU: 18 UID: 0 PID: 94573 Comm: x169 Not tainted 6.18.44 #1 PREEMPT(lazy)
RIP: 0010:0xffffffffc0601d8d
Call Trace:
<TASK>
? bpf_trampoline_6442515411+0x1a4/0x21b
bpf_lsm_bprm_committed_creds+0x5/0x10
security_bprm_committed_creds+0x5f/0x70
begin_new_exec+0x2d6/0x410
...
We hit this in production when progs attached through trampolines got
detached while their hooks were busy, and it was independently found
with a fuzzer and KASAN.
Have the JITs emit a patchable nop in front of each prog call sequence
and record it in the image. When a prog is detached, patch its nop to a
jump over the call sequence. Progs that stay attached keep running for
the tasks that are in the image, and ip_after_call isn't needed anymore.
The task can be in any image that isn't freed yet, not only in the
current one. It sleeps in image I1 that calls S, P and Q, then P is
detached and the trampoline moves to image I2, then Q is detached and
its call is still in I1. So the trampoline keeps a list of its images
until they are freed, and detaching a prog patches its nop in all of
them. Images hold a reference on the trampoline for that long.
On riscv and loongarch a jump of any range takes several instructions,
and a task preempted in the middle of them could resume into half of the
new sequence. The nop is a single instruction there, patched to a near
branch through arch_bpf_trampoline_skip().
With the extra nops, BPF_MAX_TRAMP_LINKS progs no longer fit in a page
on x86 and arm64 (and already didn't on powerpc), so lower the limit
there like s390 does.