CVE-2026-98043 PUBLISHED

bpf: Don't infer non-NULL from a pointer with an unbounded offset

Assigner: Linux
Reserved: 25.09.2026 Published: 25.09.2026 Updated: 25.09.2026

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

bpf: Don't infer non-NULL from a pointer with an unbounded offset

reg_not_null() decides that a register holds a non-NULL value by looking at its type alone. For pointer types that allow arithmetic the type only guarantees a non-NULL base, in case of an unbound offset the runtime offset value might still add up to NULL. Consider the followng program:

r6 = bpf_map_lookup_elem(map, &0); / present / if (r6 == 0) return 0; r7 = bpf_map_lookup_elem(map, &1); / absent, NULL at runtime / r8 = r7; r8 -= r6; / pointer - pointer: unknown scalar, -r6 / r8 <<= 1; r8 >>= 1; / any non-negative offset is accepted by / / check_reg_sane_offset_ptr() / r6 += r8; / verifier: map value; runtime: zero / if (r7 != r6) return 0; (u8 )(r7 + 0); / r7 is inferred non-NULL, both are zero /

At runtime both registers are zero, the comparison is true and the load faults with NULL pointer dereference.

Require the offset to be within +-BPF_MAX_VAR_OFF in reg_not_null().

Product Status

Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from cac616db39c207dc63465a4e05c6ce0e60b2cce4 to cb6642048739bf4ee5aa09fe465511f1e87caa63 (excl.)
  • affected from cac616db39c207dc63465a4e05c6ce0e60b2cce4 to 67b529f521a6676cdfc78b91b0217d7eaa84216b (excl.)
Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: affected
  • Version 5.8 is affected
  • unaffected from 0 to 5.8 (excl.)
  • unaffected from 7.2.7 to 7.2.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.3-rc2 to * (incl.)

References