Bug 2555221 (CVE-2026-98856)

Summary: CVE-2026-98856 kernel: kprobes: Skip disarmed probes when checking optkprobe overlap
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 kernel probes (kprobes) tracing subsystem. When arming an optimized probe near an inactive probe, the overlap detection check fails to identify an active jump instruction. A privileged local user can exploit this issue by registering specific overlapping tracepoints, causing the kernel to overwrite instruction bytes and branch to an invalid address. This flaw can lead to a kernel crash resulting in a Denial of Service (DoS) or potentially arbitrary code execution within the kernel context.
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-10-18 16:02:49 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

kprobes: Skip disarmed probes when checking optkprobe overlap

On x86, an optkprobe at A replaces five bytes with a jump. If a disabled
probe B is at A+2, get_optimized_kprobe() stops at B when arming a new
probe C at A+4. It leaves A optimized:

              A    A+1  A+2  A+3  A+4
  A's jump  | e9 | d0 | d1 | d2 | d3 |
  after C   | e9 | d0 | d1 | d2 | cc |

The INT3 for C overwrites the last byte of A's jump displacement, so
execution can jump to the wrong address. B can have prepared optinsns
while disarmed, but has no jump to unoptimize.

Continue past disarmed and unprepared probes to find the active optimized
probe before arming a probe in its jump.