VulnerabilityAnalyzed

CVE-2026-23383

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: bpf, arm64: Force 8-byte alignment for JIT buffer to prevent atomic tearing struct bpf_plt contains a u64 target field.

HIGH 7.8EPSS 0.13%

Does this matter?

High impact if exploited, but EPSS currently rates exploitation as unlikely (0.13%). Schedule it in the normal patch cycle and watch for a rise in EPSS or a public exploit.

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: bpf, arm64: Force 8-byte alignment for JIT buffer to prevent atomic tearing struct bpf_plt contains a u64 target field. Currently, the BPF JIT allocator requests an alignment of 4 bytes (sizeof(u32)) for the JIT buffer. Because the base address of the JIT buffer can be 4-byte aligned (e.g., ending in 0x4 or 0xc), the relative padding logic in build_plt() fails to ensure that target lands on an 8-byte boundary. This leads to two issues: 1. UBSAN reports misaligned-access warnings when dereferencing the structure. 2. More critically, target is updated concurrently via WRITE_ONCE() in bpf_arch_text_poke() while the JIT'd code executes ldr. On arm64, 64-bit loads/stores are only guaranteed to be single-copy atomic if they are 64-bit aligned. A misaligned target risks a torn read, causing the JIT to jump to a corrupted address. Fix this by increasing the allocation alignment requirement to 8 bytes (sizeof(u64)) in bpf_jit_binary_pack_alloc(). This anchors the base of the JIT buffer to an 8-byte boundary, allowing the relative padding math in build_plt() to correctly align the target field.

CVSS 3.1: 7.8 HIGHCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
EPSS: 0.13% probability · 3th percentile
CISA KEV: Not listed
Affected: linux/linux kernel
Source: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67

References

Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA. Refreshed daily.