Bug 2560851 (CVE-2026-99092)

Summary: CVE-2026-99092 kernel: riscv: patch: fix handling of bpf-jit execmem addresses
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: low Docs Contact:
Priority: low    
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 RISC-V architecture. An issue in the instruction patching mechanism improperly handles memory allocated for Berkeley Packet Filter Just-In-Time (BPF JIT) compilation under specific kernel memory configurations. A local user capable of loading BPF programs can cause the kernel to attempt to write to read-only memory. This operation triggers kernel page faults and warnings, preventing programs from compiling and resulting in a denial of service (DoS).
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-10-26 15:16:48 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

riscv: patch: fix handling of bpf-jit execmem addresses

Commit 8718e5a3090b ("riscv: patch: skip fixmap mapping when kernel text
is already writable") gated the core_kernel_text() branch of patch_map()
on CONFIG_STRICT_KERNEL_RWX, and explicitly left the vmalloc branch
unchanged. That branch has a separate problem.

That branch only creates a temporary writable fixmap alias when
CONFIG_STRICT_MODULE_RWX is enabled, and otherwise assumes the target is
directly writable and returns the address unchanged. That assumption no
longer holds: bpf_prog_pack_alloc calls set_memory_rox() on every pack
unconditionally in alloc_new_pack(), independently of any
CONFIG_STRICT_*_RWX option, so BPF text in the vmalloc area is read-only
regardless of what CONFIG_STRICT_MODULE_RWX says.

With CONFIG_STRICT_MODULE_RWX=n, patch_map() returns the read-only
address directly, the subsequent copy_to_kernel_nofault() takes a
page fault and returns -EFAULT. bpf_arch_text_copy() turns that into
-EINVAL, which propagates through bpf_jit_binary_pack_finalize() to the
WARN_ON() in bpf_int_jit_compile() and leaves the program un-JITed.

Note that BPF cannot be fixed the way kprobes was in
commit bdc46e507b59 ("riscv: mm: make EXECMEM_KPROBES writable without
CONFIG_STRICT_MODULE_RWX"). EXECMEM_BPF is already PAGE_KERNEL, i.e.
writable at allocation time; the read-only mapping is established
afterwards by generic code in alloc_new_pack(), which arch code cannot
influence. The only place this can be handled is patch_map().

This is the same problem that was fixed on arm64 by commit b1480ed230ac
("arm64: patching: fix handling of execmem addresses"), and the fix is
the same: CONFIG_EXECMEM is what actually tracks whether the vmalloc
area can hold executable memory that needs a temporary alias to be
written. CONFIG_BPF_JIT, CONFIG_KPROBES and CONFIG_MODULES all select
it.

Note that this is not limited to CONFIG_MODULES=n. Unlike arm64, riscv
selects CONFIG_ARCH_OPTIONAL_KERNEL_RWX, so CONFIG_STRICT_MODULE_RWX can
be disabled with CONFIG_MODULES=y as well, and the bug is reachable in
that configuration too.

The !CONFIG_MMU build is unaffected: it has its own __patch_insn_set()
and __patch_insn_write() implementations and never calls patch_map().