Bug 2481904 (CVE-2026-45886)

Summary: CVE-2026-45886 kernel: bpf: Fix bpf_xdp_store_bytes proto for read-only arg
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security <prodsec-ir-bot>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
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Priority: medium    
Version: unspecifiedCC: rhel-process-autobot, watson-tool-maintainers
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Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-05-27 15:01:37 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

bpf: Fix bpf_xdp_store_bytes proto for read-only arg

While making some maps in Cilium read-only from the BPF side, we noticed
that the bpf_xdp_store_bytes proto is incorrect. In particular, the
verifier was throwing the following error:

  ; ret = ctx_store_bytes(ctx, l3_off + offsetof(struct iphdr, saddr),
                          &nat->address, 4, 0);
  635: (79) r1 = *(u64 *)(r10 -144)     ; R1=ctx() R10=fp0 fp-144=ctx()
  636: (b4) w2 = 26                     ; R2=26
  637: (b4) w4 = 4                      ; R4=4
  638: (b4) w5 = 0                      ; R5=0
  639: (85) call bpf_xdp_store_bytes#190
  write into map forbidden, value_size=6 off=0 size=4

nat comes from a BPF_F_RDONLY_PROG map, so R3 is a PTR_TO_MAP_VALUE.
The verifier checks the helper's memory access to R3 in
check_mem_size_reg, as it reaches ARG_CONST_SIZE argument. The third
argument has expected type ARG_PTR_TO_UNINIT_MEM, which includes the
MEM_WRITE flag. The verifier thus checks for a BPF_WRITE access on R3.
Given R3 points to a read-only map, the check fails.

Conversely, ARG_PTR_TO_UNINIT_MEM can also lead to the helper reading
from uninitialized memory.

This patch simply fixes the expected argument type to match that of
bpf_skb_store_bytes.