Back

HIGH

bpf: Fix BPF_F_CPU validation for sparse CPU IDs

Published Sep 25, 2026

Description

BPF_F_CPU stores the target CPU ID in the upper 32 bits of the map operation flags. bpf_map_check_op_flags() currently compares that ID with num_possible_cpus(), which is the number of possible CPUs rather than a bound on CPU IDs.

On an arm64 QEMU guest with a CPU device-tree hole, the possible CPU mask was 0,2-3. A userspace program using raw bpf() syscalls creates a BPF_MAP_TYPE_PERCPU_ARRAY and performs update and lookup operations for each CPU by setting BPF_F_CPU and the CPU ID in the flags.

With the old check, CPU 1 is incorrectly accepted while valid CPU 3 is rejected with -ERANGE. The CPU 1 update then reaches the per-CPU map access path and triggers:

Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address ... pc : __pi_memcpy_generic+0x5c/0x22c lr : bpf_percpu_array_update+0x2dc/0x2e8 Call trace: __pi_memcpy_generic bpf_map_update_value map_update_elem __sys_bpf

Check the CPU ID against nr_cpu_ids and cpu_possible() instead. This rejects CPU IDs outside the valid range and CPUs absent from the possible mask, while allowing valid sparse CPU IDs.

Affected products

Remediation

No remediation recorded yet.

Metrics

Weaknesses (0)

No CWE recorded.

References (2)

Change history (0)

No recorded changes yet.

Sources
CVE.org / MITRE
Status PUBLISHED
Assigner Linux
Published Sep 25, 2026
Updated Sep 25, 2026
Reserved Sep 25, 2026
NVD
Status Received
Modified Sep 25, 2026
Red Hat
Severity n/a
Public date n/a