Bug 2541352 (CVE-2026-98134) - CVE-2026-98134 kernel: bpf: check_cond_jmp_op(): properly infer if register is null
Summary: CVE-2026-98134 kernel: bpf: check_cond_jmp_op(): properly infer if register i...
Keywords:
Status: NEW
Alias: CVE-2026-98134
Product: Security Response
Classification: Other
Component: vulnerability
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
low
low
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Product Security
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2026-09-25 11:32 UTC by OSIDB Bzimport
Modified: 2026-09-28 14:49 UTC (History)
17 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-09-25 11:32:42 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

bpf: check_cond_jmp_op(): properly infer if register is null

Nicholas Carlini reported a bug when verifier can incorrectly infer
that a pointer is non-null. The bug occurs when two pointers are
compared and one of them has a type w/o PTR_MAYBE_NULL flag,
but which allows a value to be NULL at runtime.
Here is an example:

  // `a` is PTR_TO_MEM | MEM_RDONLY | PTR_UNTRUSTED
  // `a` is 0 at runtime.
  // `b` is PTR_TO_MAP_VALUE | PTR_MAYBE_NULL
  void *a = bpf_rdonly_cast(0, 0);
  int  *b = bpf_map_lookup_elem(...);

  if (a == b)
    *b = 42;  // verifier does not catch null pointer dereference

This happens because of a special case in check_cond_jmp_op(),
which attempts to strip PTR_MAYBE_NULL flags from pointer types,
when processing comparisons like `rA == rB`, if either rA or rB can't
be null.

The non-null property is derived based on the absence of
PTR_MAYBE_NULL flag on rA's or rB's type. But that is not sufficient
for types like PTR_TO_MEM, as in the example.

This patch replaces type_may_be_null() call with reg_not_null(),
which contains an allowlist of types for which absence of
PTR_MAYBE_NULL actually means that the value can't be NULL at runtime.

At the moment, the list in the reg_not_null() omits two types for
which PTR_MAYBE_NULL is applicable: PTR_TO_XDP_SOCK and PTR_TO_BUF.
In order to remain backward compatible, and assuming that only
comparison between pointers of the same type makes sense,
this commit extends reg_not_null(). W/o such an extension e.g.
verifier_jeq_infer_not_null/null_ptr_to_map_value fails.

reg_not_null() can be extended further, but I deem that out of scope
for the fix at hand. Explicit base_type(...) != PTR_TO_BTF_ID
checks in the check_cond_jmp_op() can be removed with migration to
reg_not_null(), but that is a behavioural change, as the special case
would start matching for PTR_TO_BTF_ID that is also is_trusted_reg().
I omit the behavioural change from this commit.


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