CVE-2026-72237

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

State
Published
Severity
Not scored
Published
Aug 15, 2026
Updated
Aug 19, 2026
Reserved
Aug 9, 2026

Read the record on cve.org

Description

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.

Scores

The record has no CVSS score.

Weaknesses

The record names no weakness.

Affected Products

ProductVersions
LinuxLinux
  • 8910075d61a37e5b0d82e6c83ed9a0a31fe9ea08 to before 4f949bc3913a6e3ce3b8574ac6ed1da8ec7a5ad1Affected
  • 8910075d61a37e5b0d82e6c83ed9a0a31fe9ea08 to before ac44b4a3d6137489f8fa2e794b12e849c6b22eaaAffected
  • 8910075d61a37e5b0d82e6c83ed9a0a31fe9ea08 to before 90843d00dbc61220b66408ea0d8775cae9e51f70Affected
  • 8910075d61a37e5b0d82e6c83ed9a0a31fe9ea08 to before 046f6244da9b68e463a849b21446b9424e531491Affected
  • 8910075d61a37e5b0d82e6c83ed9a0a31fe9ea08 to before 2e706be56f418718bb3ae66c0aa94f9b61150e6dAffected
  • 8910075d61a37e5b0d82e6c83ed9a0a31fe9ea08 to before 47915e855fb38b42133e31ba917d99565f862154Affected
LinuxLinux
  • 5.19Affected
  • before 5.19Not affected
  • 6.1.183 through 6.1.*Not affected
  • 6.6.145 through 6.6.*Not affected
  • 6.12.97 through 6.12.*Not affected
  • 6.18.40 through 6.18.*Not affected
  • 7.1.5 through 7.1.*Not affected
  • 7.2 and laterNot affected

References

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