CVE-2023-52978: riscv: kprobe: Fixup kernel panic when probing an illegal position

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2025-03-27 · updated 2026-06-17

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: riscv: kprobe: Fixup kernel panic when probing an illegal position The kernel would panic when probed for an illegal position. eg: (CONFIG_RISCV_ISA_C=n) echo 'p:hello kernel_clone+0x16 a0=%a0' >> kprobe_events echo 1 > events/kprobes/hello/enable cat trace Kernel panic - not syncing: stack-protector: Kernel stack is corrupted in: __do_sys_newfstatat+0xb8/0xb8 CPU: 0 PID: 111 Comm: sh Not tainted 6.2.0-rc1-00027-g2d398fe49a4d #490 Hardware name: riscv-virtio,qemu (DT) Call Trace: [<ffffffff80007268>] dump_backtrace+0x38/0x48 [<ffffffff80c5e83c>] show_stack+0x50/0x68 [<ffffffff80c6da28>] dump_stack_lvl+0x60/0x84 [<ffffffff80c6da6c>] dump_stack+0x20/0x30 [<ffffffff80c5ecf4>] panic+0x160/0x374 [<ffffffff80c6db94>] generic_handle_arch_irq+0x0/0xa8 [<ffffffff802deeb0>] sys_newstat+0x0/0x30 [<ffffffff800158c0>] sys_clone+0x20/0x30 [<ffffffff800039e8>] ret_from_syscall+0x0/0x4 ---[ end Kernel panic - not syncing: stack-protector: Kernel stack is corrupted in: __do_sys_newfstatat+0xb8/0xb8 ]--- That is because the kprobe's ebreak instruction broke the kernel's original code. The user should guarantee the correction of the probe position, but it couldn't make the kernel panic. This patch adds arch_check_kprobe in arch_prepare_kprobe to prevent an illegal position (Such as the middle of an instruction).

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 5.12 before 5.15.93; from 5.16 through 6.1.11; 6.2-rc1, 6.2-rc2, 6.2-rc3, 6.2-rc4, 6.2-rc5, 6.2-rc6 — fixed in 5.15.93

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 5.15.93. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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