CVE-2026-74314

bpf: Cancel special fields on map value recycle

State
Published
Severity
7.8 High
Published
Aug 15, 2026
Updated
Oct 16, 2026
Reserved
Aug 15, 2026

Read the record on cve.org

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

bpf: Cancel special fields on map value recycle

Map update and delete paths currently call bpf_obj_free_fields() when a value is being replaced or recycled. That makes field destruction depend on the context of the update/delete operation. For tracing programs this can include NMI context, where referenced kptr destructors, uptr unpinning, and graph root destruction are not generally safe.

Introduce bpf_obj_cancel_fields() for the reusable-value path. It only performs NMI-safe cleanup for timer, workqueue, and task_work fields. Fields that need full destruction are left attached to the recycled value and are destroyed by the final cleanup path instead.

Switch array and hashtab update/delete/recycle paths to this cancel helper. Keep bpf_obj_free_fields() for final map destruction and for bpf_mem_alloc destructors. Preallocated hashtabs do not have allocator destructors, so teardown continues to walk the normal and extra elements and fully destroy their fields.

This deliberately relaxes the eager-free semantics of map update/delete for special fields. Programs that relied on a recycled map slot becoming empty immediately after update/delete were relying on behavior that cannot be implemented safely from every BPF execution context without offloading arbitrary destructors.

There is a chance this change breaks programs making assumptions regarding the eager freeing of fields. If so, we can relax semantics to cancellation only when irqs_disabled() is true in the future. However, theoretically, map values that get reused eagerly already have weaker guarantees as parallel users can recreate freed fields before the new element becomes visible again.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
3.17.8 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HLinux

Weaknesses

The record names no weakness.

Affected Products

ProductVersions
LinuxLinux
  • 14a324f6a67ef6a53e04362a70160a47eb8afffa to before 9ea734e2cc0143d7429ab7dc0b20c85e5836183cAffected
  • 14a324f6a67ef6a53e04362a70160a47eb8afffa to before a3a81d247651218e47153f2d2afd7aee236726fdAffected
  • f0462d38589422bc9e27fd3c6343dfeb6b3db2f9Affected
  • 5.18.18 to before 5.19Affected
LinuxLinux
  • 5.19Affected
  • before 5.19Not affected
  • 7.1.5 through 7.1.*Not affected
  • 7.2 and laterNot affected

References

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