KernelScan.io

HIGH Introduced in 5.5

bpf Trampoline RetVal Corruption

CVE-2026-90359

CVSS 7.3 / 10.0 KernelScan AI

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:L

01

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: bpf: Reject >8 byte return values on return-reading trampoline paths btf_distill_func_proto() builds the function model used for the fentry/fexit/fmod_ret/fsession trampolines and struct_ops. It has accepted a 16-byte __int128 return value since the trampoline was introduced: __get_type_size() returns the integer's type size, and the return-type check only rejected ret < 0. But the BPF trampoline preserves only 8 bytes of the return value (RAX on x86, i.e. R0). For an attach type that reads the target's return value the second half (RDX / R3) is neither saved nor restored, so a program attached to a function returning a 16-byte value corrupts the value seen by the real caller and itself observes only half of it. struct_ops trampolines have the same limitation. This affects the attach types that read the target's return value: fexit, fmod_ret and fsession (plus the _multi variants of fexit and fsession), and struct_ops. fentry/fentry_multi run before the target returns and are unaffected. Reject a >8 byte return value for these attach types in bpf_check_attach_target() and bpf_check_attach_btf_id_multi(), and for struct_ops in bpf_struct_ops_desc_init().

02

Engine v0.6.0

Risk summary

A local attacker with CAP_BPF can attach a BPF tracing program to a kernel function returning a 16-byte value, corrupting the return value seen by the real caller. The corruption is attacker-influenced and could potentially be leveraged for arbitrary kernel memory read or write if the return value is used as a pointer or size. Products that allow unprivileged BPF or grant CAP_BPF to containers are at higher risk.

Affectedkernel/bpf/verifier.c, kernel/bpf/bpf_struct_ops.c (bpf)

Vulnerability analysis

The BPF trampoline saves and restores only 8 bytes of a target function's return value, but the verifier accepted functions returning 16-byte values such as __int128. When a BPF program is attached via fexit, fmod_ret, fsession, or struct_ops to such a function, the upper 8 bytes of the return value are neither saved nor restored — the real caller receives a corrupted return value and the BPF program itself observes only half of it. The fix adds explicit validation that rejects return types larger than 8 bytes for all attach types that read the target's return value, preventing the unsupported configuration from being loaded. This is reachable locally by any user who can load and attach a BPF tracing program, which requires CAP_BPF (or unprivileged BPF if enabled on the system).

03

BranchIntroducedFixed inPatch commit
6.125.56.12.114de54ba33690d
6.185.56.18.579a9e902bd055
7.25.57.2.6d36ac53fc83b
mainline5.57.3c48796aa6c39

04

State of the newest release of each Civil Infrastructure Platform SLTS tree, from CIP's own fix records.

CIP treeState
cip/6.12Affected — no CIP fix yet (latest 6.12.112-cip33)
cip/6.1Affected — no CIP fix yet (latest 6.1.189-cip61)
cip/6.1-rtAffected — no CIP fix yet (latest 6.1.189-cip61-rt32)
cip/5.10Affected — no CIP fix yet (latest 5.10.271-cip78)
cip/5.10-rtAffected — no CIP fix yet (latest 5.10.268-cip77-rt34)