Bug 2388943 (CVE-2025-38528)

Summary: CVE-2025-38528 kernel: bpf: Reject %p% format string in bprintf-like helpers
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
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Version: unspecifiedKeywords: Security
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OS: Linux   
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2025-08-16 12:02:53 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

bpf: Reject %p% format string in bprintf-like helpers

static const char fmt[] = "%p%";
    bpf_trace_printk(fmt, sizeof(fmt));

The above BPF program isn't rejected and causes a kernel warning at
runtime:

    Please remove unsupported %\x00 in format string
    WARNING: CPU: 1 PID: 7244 at lib/vsprintf.c:2680 format_decode+0x49c/0x5d0

This happens because bpf_bprintf_prepare skips over the second %,
detected as punctuation, while processing %p. This patch fixes it by
not skipping over punctuation. %\x00 is then processed in the next
iteration and rejected.