CVE-2026-43009 PUBLISHED

bpf: Fix incorrect pruning due to atomic fetch precision tracking

Assigner: Linux
Reserved: 01.05.2026 Published: 01.05.2026 Updated: 01.05.2026

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

bpf: Fix incorrect pruning due to atomic fetch precision tracking

When backtrack_insn encounters a BPF_STX instruction with BPF_ATOMIC and BPF_FETCH, the src register (or r0 for BPF_CMPXCHG) also acts as a destination, thus receiving the old value from the memory location.

The current backtracking logic does not account for this. It treats atomic fetch operations the same as regular stores where the src register is only an input. This leads the backtrack_insn to fail to propagate precision to the stack location, which is then not marked as precise!

Later, the verifier's path pruning can incorrectly consider two states equivalent when they differ in terms of stack state. Meaning, two branches can be treated as equivalent and thus get pruned when they should not be seen as such.

Fix it as follows: Extend the BPF_LDX handling in backtrack_insn to also cover atomic fetch operations via is_atomic_fetch_insn() helper. When the fetch dst register is being tracked for precision, clear it, and propagate precision over to the stack slot. For non-stack memory, the precision walk stops at the atomic instruction, same as regular BPF_LDX. This covers all fetch variants.

Before:

0: (b7) r1 = 8 ; R1=8 1: (7b) (u64 )(r10 -8) = r1 ; R1=8 R10=fp0 fp-8=8 2: (b7) r2 = 0 ; R2=0 3: (db) r2 = atomic64_fetch_add((u64 )(r10 -8), r2) ; R2=8 R10=fp0 fp-8=mmmmmmmm 4: (bf) r3 = r10 ; R3=fp0 R10=fp0 5: (0f) r3 += r2 mark_precise: frame0: last_idx 5 first_idx 0 subseq_idx -1 mark_precise: frame0: regs=r2 stack= before 4: (bf) r3 = r10 mark_precise: frame0: regs=r2 stack= before 3: (db) r2 = atomic64_fetch_add((u64 )(r10 -8), r2) mark_precise: frame0: regs=r2 stack= before 2: (b7) r2 = 0 6: R2=8 R3=fp8 6: (b7) r0 = 0 ; R0=0 7: (95) exit

After:

0: (b7) r1 = 8 ; R1=8 1: (7b) (u64 )(r10 -8) = r1 ; R1=8 R10=fp0 fp-8=8 2: (b7) r2 = 0 ; R2=0 3: (db) r2 = atomic64_fetch_add((u64 )(r10 -8), r2) ; R2=8 R10=fp0 fp-8=mmmmmmmm 4: (bf) r3 = r10 ; R3=fp0 R10=fp0 5: (0f) r3 += r2 mark_precise: frame0: last_idx 5 first_idx 0 subseq_idx -1 mark_precise: frame0: regs=r2 stack= before 4: (bf) r3 = r10 mark_precise: frame0: regs=r2 stack= before 3: (db) r2 = atomic64_fetch_add((u64 )(r10 -8), r2) mark_precise: frame0: regs= stack=-8 before 2: (b7) r2 = 0 mark_precise: frame0: regs= stack=-8 before 1: (7b) (u64 )(r10 -8) = r1 mark_precise: frame0: regs=r1 stack= before 0: (b7) r1 = 8 6: R2=8 R3=fp8 6: (b7) r0 = 0 ; R0=0 7: (95) exit

Product Status

Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 5ca419f2864a2c60940dcf4bbaeb69546200e36f to 7ffbe45b1d227e24659998a91cfd4c27af457e71 (excl.)
  • affected from 5ca419f2864a2c60940dcf4bbaeb69546200e36f to 179ee84a89114b854ac2dd1d293633a7f6c8dac1 (excl.)
Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: affected
  • Version 5.12 is affected
  • unaffected from 0 to 5.12 (excl.)
  • unaffected from 6.19.12 to 6.19.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.0 to * (incl.)

References