bpf: Reject negative const offsets for buffer pointers
Key facts
- Attack vector
- Local
- Privileges required
- Low
- User interaction
- None
- Attack complexity
- Low
- Impact type
- —
- Confidentiality · integrity · availability
- High · High · High
- Fix status
- Fixed
Attack profile from CVSS 3.1 · CNA. Fix status from CNA.
Summary
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: bpf: Reject negative const offsets for buffer pointers The verifier rejects variable offsets for PTR_TO_TP_BUFFER and PTR_TO_BUF accesses, but it currently accepts a constant negative offset produced by pointer arithmetic. Commit 022ac0750883 ("bpf: use reg->var_off instead of reg->off for pointers") moved constant pointer offsets from reg->off to reg->var_off. However, __check_buffer_access() continued to check only the instruction offset. An access with reg->var_off equal to -8 and an instruction offset of zero therefore passes verification. For writable raw tracepoints, the access end is also calculated from the unsigned reg->var_off.value. An eight-byte access starting at -8 wraps the calculated end to zero, allowing the program to load and attach without increasing max_tp_access. After ensuring that reg->var_off is constant, calculate the effective access start using signed arithmetic and reject it when it is negative. Use the validated start to calculate the access end for both PTR_TO_TP_BUFFER and PTR_TO_BUF.
Why it matters now
SSVC decision points
Not available: CISA has not published SSVC decision points for this record.
Affected products
Remediation
- Fix · CNA Linux (Linux) Fixed in 7.1.5, 7.2
Vendor assessments
Red Hat
Red Hat rating: Moderate. Red Hat's page for this CVE →
Not affected: 5 products
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9
Timeline
- 2026-10-02 Threatist record created from CVE-2026-68462
- 2026-10-03 Alias added: GHSA-r48x-xhw6-jmg8
References
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Sources
- CVE-2026-68462 · CVE Program
- CVE-2026-68462 · NVD
- FIRST EPSS
- GHSA-r48x-xhw6-jmg8 · GitHub Advisory Database · CC BY 4.0
- CVE-2026-68462 · Red Hat security data · CC BY 4.0
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