Bug 2562662 (CVE-2026-99163)

Summary: CVE-2026-99163 kernel: kernel: Denial of Service via improper field validation in synthetic event tracing
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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Doc Text:
A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's tracing subsystem. This vulnerability allows a local user with tracing privileges to cause a Denial of Service (DoS) or potentially corrupt kernel memory by creating synthetic events with mismatched field types. Due to improper type validation, the kernel incorrectly treats numerical scalar values as memory pointers and dereferences them.
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Embargoed:

Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-10-28 10:45:50 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

tracing/histograms: Reject non-stacktrace fields for synthetic stacktrace fields

In check_synth_field(), when a synthetic event field is a stacktrace
(field->is_stack) and the histogram field is not a "long[" stacktrace
array, validation falls through to the generic size and signedness
comparison.

Because parse_synth_field() sets a stacktrace field's type to
"__data_loc unsigned long[]", its size is sizeof(u64) and
synth_field_signed() marks it as signed.  Consequently, any 8-byte
signed scalar histogram field passes the fallback check, and its scalar
value is subsequently dereferenced as a kernel stacktrace pointer in
get_field_size() and trace_stack().

Furthermore, checking strstr(hist_field->type, "long[") is insufficient
because tracepoint fields defined with __bitmask() or __rel_bitmask()
also have type "__data_loc unsigned long[]" or "__rel_loc unsigned
long[]", whilst create_hist_field() treats them as 4-byte scalar values
without HIST_FIELD_FL_STACKTRACE.

Propagate HIST_FIELD_FL_STACKTRACE to variable references and field
variables (whilst excluding variable aliases from per-element
stacktrace capture), and reject any mismatch between
HIST_FIELD_FL_STACKTRACE and field->is_stack in check_synth_field().