Bug 2453804 (CVE-2026-23409) - CVE-2026-23409 kernel: apparmor: fix differential encoding verification
Summary: CVE-2026-23409 kernel: apparmor: fix differential encoding verification
Keywords:
Status: NEW
Alias: CVE-2026-23409
Product: Security Response
Classification: Other
Component: vulnerability
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
unspecified
unspecified
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Product Security
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2026-04-01 10:02 UTC by OSIDB Bzimport
Modified: 2026-04-01 10:41 UTC (History)
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-04-01 10:02:41 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

apparmor: fix differential encoding verification

Differential encoding allows loops to be created if it is abused. To
prevent this the unpack should verify that a diff-encode chain
terminates.

Unfortunately the differential encode verification had two bugs.

1. it conflated states that had gone through check and already been
   marked, with states that were currently being checked and marked.
   This means that loops in the current chain being verified are treated
   as a chain that has already been verified.

2. the order bailout on already checked states compared current chain
   check iterators j,k instead of using the outer loop iterator i.
   Meaning a step backwards in states in the current chain verification
   was being mistaken for moving to an already verified state.

Move to a double mark scheme where already verified states get a
different mark, than the current chain being kept. This enables us
to also drop the backwards verification check that was the cause of
the second error as any already verified state is already marked.


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