Soft lockup in Linux kernel BPF hash map batch lookup
Key facts
- Attack vector
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- Privileges required
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- User interaction
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- Attack complexity
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- Impact type
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- Confidentiality · integrity · availability
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- Fix status
- Partial Red Hat: 5 without a fix
No CVSS vector from any source. Fix status from CNA and Red Hat.
Summary
The Linux kernel BPF hash map batch lookup and delete path has no rescheduling point, so a single batch call can walk an entire large map. On a 144-CPU arm64 host with an LRU hash map of 16,777,216 buckets, periodic BPF_MAP_LOOKUP_BATCH calls held a CPU for 77+ seconds and triggered the soft lockup watchdog.
Written with Claude Haiku 5.5 from the sources below · 2026-10-30
Description from the CNA
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: bpf: Avoid soft lockup in __htab_map_lookup_and_delete_batch() __htab_map_lookup_and_delete_batch() has no rescheduling point. The batch count bounds how many entries are copied out, not how many buckets are visited, so one BPF_MAP_LOOKUP_BATCH call can walk the map end to end. The empty-bucket fast path is worse: it stays inside a single rcu_read_lock() / bpf_disable_instrumentation() section for any run of consecutive empty buckets. That holds up on small maps, but it falls apart at scale. On a 144-CPU arm64 host running a CONFIG_PREEMPT_NONE kernel, periodic BPF_MAP_LOOKUP_BATCH calls against an LRU hash map with 16,777,216 buckets held a CPU inside the batch op for 77+ seconds and triggered the soft lockup watchdog. Commit 75134f16e7dd ("bpf: Add schedule points in batch ops") fixed this same problem in the generic batch ops, but not in this htab-native path, which every htab-based hash map variant uses for its lookup[_and_delete] batch ops. Complete that fix here. Leave the critical section after 64 consecutive empty buckets, call cond_resched_tasks_rcu_qs(), and resume at the saved bucket cursor. No locks are held at that point, and resuming from the cursor is already the function's behavior for non-empty buckets. Add the same call to the per-bucket loop after copy_to_user(), where every lock has been dropped. cond_resched_rcu() is not enough here: sleeping with bpf_prog_active elevated makes tracing programs on that CPU silently skip their invocations. Plain cond_resched() is not enough either. It is a no-op under PREEMPT and PREEMPT_LAZY, the only models arm64 and x86 have offered since commit 7dadeaa6e851 ("sched: Further restrict the preemption modes"). It is also never a Tasks RCU quiescent state, in any model: the reschedule counts as a preemption. The walking task stays a holdout and stalls every synchronize_rcu_tasks() caller, ftrace and BPF trampoline teardown included, until the syscall returns [1]. cond_resched_tasks_rcu_qs() is the usual tool for that [2]. It reports the quiescent state at each yield and still reschedules as cond_resched() does on PREEMPT_NONE and PREEMPT_VOLUNTARY kernels.
Why it matters now
SSVC decision points
Not available: CISA has not published SSVC decision points for this record.
Affected products
Remediation
Update the Linux kernel to 5.15.222, 6.1.189, 6.6.158, 6.12.112, 6.18.55, 7.2.9 or 7.3, depending on your release branch. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, 9 and 10 and Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 and 5 are affected. The sources list no fixed version for them.
Written with Claude Haiku 5.5 from the sources below · 2026-10-30
- Fix · CNA Linux (Linux) Fixed in 5.15.222, 6.1.189, 6.6.158, 6.12.112, 6.18.55, 7.2.9, 7.3
Vendor assessments
Red Hat
Red Hat rating: Moderate. Red Hat's page for this CVE →
| Product | Status | Plan or fix |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 5 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
Not affected: 2 products
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
Timeline
- 2026-10-18 Threatist record created from CVE-2026-98644
- 2026-10-18 Alias added: GHSA-p6rx-8wrq-4gc7
- 2026-10-19 Fix available: Linux/[email protected] · CNA
- 2026-10-22 Affected versions changed · Red Hat
- 2026-10-22 CVSS score added · Red Hat
- 2026-10-30 Affected versions changed · Red Hat
References
Other 7
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/5c8b1869cb99a32a962388848cd19604fb41263e
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ca5bd55fc508fbb5c08c62206d02237a5b6fc7e8
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/77a3b52b4455e6377e549539e757bc55eedefb51
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/f0c09de08ec077098b7e1563f2285f1c136cd816
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/44f9bcb5ab2b268bc763ed3ebec83308b4972936
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/4e48fe9b1c77966bede0a73feb3059d7595f642d
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/85136bf22404474a815fc0ed26ec0d1cbc1bc3f9
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Sources
- CVE-2026-98644 · CVE Program
- CVE-2026-98644 · NVD
- FIRST EPSS
- GHSA-p6rx-8wrq-4gc7 · GitHub Advisory Database · CC BY 4.0
- CVE-2026-98644 · Red Hat security data · CC BY 4.0
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