Bug 2516345 (CVE-2026-72237) - CVE-2026-72237 kernel: perf/x86/amd/brs: Fix kernel address leakage
Summary: CVE-2026-72237 kernel: perf/x86/amd/brs: Fix kernel address leakage
Keywords:
Status: NEW
Alias: CVE-2026-72237
Product: Security Response
Classification: Other
Component: vulnerability
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Product Security DevOps Team
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2026-08-15 06:07 UTC by OSIDB Bzimport
Modified: 2026-08-18 07:15 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed:
Embargoed:


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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-08-15 06:07:38 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

perf/x86/amd/brs: Fix kernel address leakage

A user-only branch stack can contain branches that originate from
the kernel. As a result, kernel addresses are exposed to user space
even when PERF_SAMPLE_BRANCH_USER is requested. On AMD processors
supporting X86_FEATURE_BRS (Zen 3 only), perf can still report entries
such as SYSRET/interrupt returns for which the branch-from addresses
are in the kernel.

E.g.

  $ perf record -j any,u -c 4000 -e branch-brs -o - -- \
        perf bench syscall basic --loop 1000 | \
        perf script -i - -F brstack|tr ' ' '\n'| \
        grep -E '0x[89a-f][0-9a-f]{15}'

  ...
  0xffffffff810001c4/0x72e2e32955eb/-/-/-/0//-
  0xffffffff810001c4/0x72e2d94a9821/-/-/-/0//-
  0xffffffff810001c4/0x72e2d94ffa1b/-/-/-/0//-
  ...

BRS provides no hardware branch filtering, so privilege level
filtering is performed entirely in software. However, amd_brs_match_plm()
only validates the branch-to address against the requested privilege
levels. For branches from the kernel to user space, the branch-from
address is left unchecked and is leaked. Extend the software filter to
also validate the branch-from address, so that any branch record whose
branch-from address is in the kernel is dropped when
PERF_SAMPLE_BRANCH_USER is requested.


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