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Fencer Vulns
high 7.8

CVE-2026-43009 json

bpf: Fix incorrect pruning due to atomic fetch precision tracking

published 2026-05-01 6 mo ago modified 2026-10-30 9 d ago also EUVD-2026-26608

cvss
7.8
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 5%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

bpf: Fix incorrect pruning due to atomic fetch precision tracking

When backtrack_insn encounters a BPF_STX instruction with BPF_ATOMIC and BPF_FETCH, the src register (or r0 for BPF_CMPXCHG) also acts as a destination, thus receiving the old value from the memory location.

The current backtracking logic does not account for this. It treats atomic fetch operations the same as regular stores where the src register is only an input. This leads the backtrack_insn to fail to propagate precision to the stack location, which is then not marked as precise!

Later, the verifier's path pruning can incorrectly consider two states equivalent when they differ in terms of stack state. Meaning, two branches can be treated as equivalent and thus get pruned when they should not be seen as such.

Fix it as follows: Extend the BPF_LDX handling in backtrack_insn to also cover atomic fetch operations via is_atomic_fetch_insn() helper. When the fetch dst register is being tracked for precision, clear it, and propagate precision over to the stack slot. For non-stack memory, the precision walk stops at the atomic instruction, same as regular BPF_LDX. This covers all fetch variants.

Before:

0: (b7) r1 = 8 ; R1=8 1: (7b) *(u64 *)(r10 -8) = r1 ; R1=8 R10=fp0 fp-8=8 2: (b7) r2 = 0 ; R2=0 3: (db) r2 = atomic64_fetch_add((u64 *)(r10 -8), r2) ; R2=8 R10=fp0 fp-8=mmmmmmmm 4: (bf) r3 = r10 ; R3=fp0 R10=fp0 5: (0f) r3 += r2 mark_precise: frame0: last_idx 5 first_idx 0 subseq_idx -1 mark_precise: frame0: regs=r2 stack= before 4: (bf) r3 = r10 mark_precise: frame0: regs=r2 stack= before 3: (db) r2 = atomic64_fetch_add((u64 *)(r10 -8), r2) mark_precise: frame0: regs=r2 stack= before 2: (b7) r2 = 0 6: R2=8 R3=fp8 6: (b7) r0 = 0 ; R0=0 7: (95) exit

After:

0: (b7) r1 = 8 ; R1=8 1: (7b) *(u64 *)(r10 -8) = r1 ; R1=8 R10=fp0 fp-8=8 2: (b7) r2 = 0 ; R2=0 3: (db) r2 = atomic64_fetch_add((u64 *)(r10 -8), r2) ; R2=8 R10=fp0 fp-8=mmmmmmmm 4: (bf) r3 = r10 ; R3=fp0 R10=fp0 5: (0f) r3 += r2 mark_precise: frame0: last_idx 5 first_idx 0 subseq_idx -1 mark_precise: frame0: regs=r2 stack= before 4: (bf) r3 = r10 mark_precise: frame0: regs=r2 stack= before 3: (db) r2 = atomic64_fetch_add((u64 *)(r10 -8), r2) mark_precise: frame0: regs= stack=-8 before 2: (b7) r2 = 0 mark_precise: frame0: regs= stack=-8 before 1: (7b) *(u64 *)(r10 -8) = r1 mark_precise: frame0: regs=r1 stack= before 0: (b7) r1 = 8 6: R2=8 R3=fp8 6: (b7) r0 = 0 ; R0=0 7: (95) exit

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.1.191, 6.6.160, 6.12.114, 6.18.50, 6.19.12, 7.0
  • linux Debian 13 6.12.115-2
  • linux Debian 14 6.19.12-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-43009

  • linux-nvidia Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1006.6
  • linux-nvidia-tegra Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1035.38

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2026-43009

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • kernel-64kb SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.53.55.1
  • kernel-syms SLE Module for Development Tools 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.53.55.1
  • kernel-azure SLE Module for Public Cloud 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.53.55.1
  • kernel-source SLE Module for Development Tools 15 SP7, SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.53.55.1
  • kernel-default SLE Workstation Extension 15 SP7, SLE Module for Legacy 15 SP7, SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP7 +2 more 6.4.0-150700.53.55.1
  • kernel-zfcpdump SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.53.55.1
  • kernel-obs-build SLE Module for Development Tools 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.53.55.1
  • kernel-default-base SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.53.55.1.150700.17.33.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2026:2238-1SUSE-SU-2026:2591-1SUSE-SU-2026:2482-1SUSE-SU-2026:22048-1SUSE-SU-2026:22087-1SUSE-SU-2026:22076-1

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2026-43009 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: bpf: Fix incorrect pruning due to atomic fetch precision tracking

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel
    affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
total
Assessed
23 d ago

Exploit prediction

0.16% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 5% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 7.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Weakness
Technology feeds

References

Sources

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