Bug 2502177 (CVE-2026-53370)

Summary: CVE-2026-53370 kernel: perf/x86/intel: Improve validation and configuration of ACR masks
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
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Priority: low    
Version: unspecifiedCC: rhel-process-autobot, watson-tool-maintainers
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
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Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's performance monitoring unit (perf/x86/intel) related to the validation and configuration of Auto Counter Reload (ACR) masks. Incomplete validation of user-space ACR masks could lead to incorrect configurations. This issue could result in inaccurate performance data or unexpected behavior in systems utilizing ACR events.
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-07-19 10:01:31 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

perf/x86/intel: Improve validation and configuration of ACR masks

Currently there are several issues on the user space ACR mask validation
and configuration.
- The validation for user space ACR mask (attr.config2) is incomplete,
  e.g., the ACR mask could include the index which belongs to another
  ACR events group, but it's not validated.
- An early return on an invalid ACR mask caused all subsequent ACR groups
  to be skipped.
- The stale hardware ACR mask (hw.config1) is not cleared before setting
  new hardware ACR mask.

The following changes address all of the above issues.
- Figure out the event index group of an ACR group. Any bits in the
  user-space mask not present in the index group are now dropped.
- Instead of an early return on invalid bits, drop only the invalid
  portions and continue iterating through all ACR events to ensure full
  configuration.
- Explicitly clear the stale hardware ACR mask for each event prior to
  writing the new configuration.

Besides, a non-leader event member of ACR group could be disabled in
theory. This could cause bit-shifting errors in the acr_mask of remaining
group members. But since ACR sampling requires all events to be active,
this should not be a big concern in real use case. Add a "FIXME" comment
to notice this risk.