Bug 2546488 (CVE-2026-98273)

Summary: CVE-2026-98273 kernel: x86/kprobes: Fix crash when probing CS CALL instructions
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 x86 kprobes subsystem. A privileged local user could cause a Denial of Service (DoS) and system crash when attaching probes to certain function call instructions using tracing tools such as extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF). This issue occurs because the kernel incorrectly calculates the instruction size and return address during emulation of Code Segment (CS) prefixed call instructions, causing the processor to execute corrupted instructions and crash.
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-10-06 09:30:55 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

x86/kprobes: Fix crash when probing CS CALL instructions

When using eBPF to probe CS CALL instructions within a function,
a crash can be triggered.

The eBPF tool probes offset 257 of the __hrtimer_run_queues()
function:

<__hrtimer_run_queues+249>:  nopl   0x0(%rax,%rax,1)
<__hrtimer_run_queues+254>:  mov    %r14,%rdi
<__hrtimer_run_queues+257>:  cs call <__x86_indirect_thunk_r12>
<__hrtimer_run_queues+263>:  mov    %eax,%r12d
<__hrtimer_run_queues+266>:  xchg   %ax,%ax
<__hrtimer_run_queues+268>:  mov    %r13,%rdi

Which triggers this crash:

  BUG: unable to handle page fault for address: 00000000000f41c9
  #PF: supervisor write access in kernel mode
  #PF: error_code(0x0002) - not-present page
  PGD 0 P4D 0
  Oops: 0002 [#1] SMP NOPTI
  CPU: 1 PID: 0 Comm: swapper/1 Kdump: loaded Tainted: P
  RIP: 0010:__hrtimer_run_queues+0x106/0x230

Note that __hrtimer_run_queues+0x106 is __hrtimer_run_queues+262, which is
at the 6th byte of the above CS CALL instruction. Since the CS CALL
instruction occupies 6 bytes, the exception occurred in the middle of that
call instruction.

The root cause is that when using eBPF tools to probe in the middle of a
function, a kprobe with INT3 is used as the underlying implementation.

During single-step emulation of the original CALL instruction,
int3_emulate_call() assumes that the probed CALL instruction is 5 bytes
long. However, the actual CS-prefixed CALL instruction occupies 6 bytes,
so it constructs an incorrect exception return address. When the CPU
returns from the kprobe handler, the next instruction to be executed is at
the address of the last byte of that CS CALL instruction. Coincidentally,
starting from that address, the CPU fetches and decodes a completely
different instruction, which ultimately triggers a kernel crash.

Fix the issue by using the actual instruction length obtained from
the instruction decoder when constructing the exception return
address, rather than relying on the hardcoded CALL_INSN_SIZE macro.

[ mingo: Refined the changelog ]