Bug 2535232 (CVE-2026-89984)

Summary: CVE-2026-89984 kernel: perf/x86/intel: Fix kernel address leakages in LBR stack
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: unspecifiedCC: akhatavk, aos-team-art-private, asdas, dpaolell, jdelft, jupierce, lgarciaa, mbiarnes, ppalepu, ppostler, prdhamdh, rhel-process-autobot, sghai, sidsharm, suppawar, vlaad, watson-tool-maintainers
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's perf/x86/intel component. Insufficient validation of privilege levels in the Last Branch Record (LBR) stack allows a local attacker to expose kernel branch records to user space. This information disclosure vulnerability can lead to kernel addresses appearing in user-only branch stacks, potentially revealing sensitive kernel memory layout.
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-09-16 11:38:04 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

perf/x86/intel: Fix kernel address leakages in LBR stack

Before Arch LBR gained CPL filtering support, a user-only branch stack
could still contain kernel addresses. As a result, kernel branch records
may be exposed to user space even when PERF_SAMPLE_BRANCH_USER is
requested.

For example, on Intel Tiger Lake, the following command can still report
SYSRET/ERET entries with kernel-space from addresses:

$ ./perf record -e cycles:p -o - --branch-filter any,save_type,u -- \
 	./perf bench syscall basic --loop 1000 | \
	./perf script -i - --fields brstack|tr ' ' '\n'| \
	grep -E '0x[89a-f][0-9a-f]{15}'

    Total time: 0.000 [sec]

      0.219000 usecs/op
     4,566,210 ops/sec
[ perf record: Woken up 1 times to write data ]
[ perf record: Captured and wrote 0.551 MB - ]
0xffffffff93c001c8/0x7f12a2b1d647/P/-/-/16959/SYSRET/-
0xffffffff93c001c8/0x7f12a2b1d5c2/P/-/-/17535/SYSRET/-
0xffffffff93c01928/0x7f12a2861000/P/-/-/6719/ERET/-
0xffffffff93c01928/0x7f12a297a000/P/-/-/8575/ERET/-

The problem is that intel_pmu_lbr_filter() does not fully validate the
privilege level of sampled entries. It filters some mismatches based on
the branch type and the to address, but it does not reject entries whose
from address violates the requested branch privilege filter.

Fix this by extending software filtering to validate both from and to
addresses against br_sel. Any LBR entry contains kernel address does not
match the requested user filter is dropped. This prevents kernel
addresses from appearing in user-only branch stacks.