CVE-2023-54247: bpf: Silence a warning in btf_type_id_size()

Severity: unknown
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2025-12-30 · updated 2026-06-17

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: bpf: Silence a warning in btf_type_id_size() syzbot reported a warning in [1] with the following stacktrace: WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 5005 at kernel/bpf/btf.c:1988 btf_type_id_size+0x2d9/0x9d0 kernel/bpf/btf.c:1988 ... RIP: 0010:btf_type_id_size+0x2d9/0x9d0 kernel/bpf/btf.c:1988 ... Call Trace: <TASK> map_check_btf kernel/bpf/syscall.c:1024 [inline] map_create+0x1157/0x1860 kernel/bpf/syscall.c:1198 __sys_bpf+0x127f/0x5420 kernel/bpf/syscall.c:5040 __do_sys_bpf kernel/bpf/syscall.c:5162 [inline] __se_sys_bpf kernel/bpf/syscall.c:5160 [inline] __x64_sys_bpf+0x79/0xc0 kernel/bpf/syscall.c:5160 do_syscall_x64 arch/x86/entry/common.c:50 [inline] do_syscall_64+0x39/0xb0 arch/x86/entry/common.c:80 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x63/0xcd With the following btf [1] DECL_TAG 'a' type_id=4 component_idx=-1 [2] PTR '(anon)' type_id=0 [3] TYPE_TAG 'a' type_id=2 [4] VAR 'a' type_id=3, linkage=static and when the bpf_attr.btf_key_type_id = 1 (DECL_TAG), the following WARN_ON_ONCE in btf_type_id_size() is triggered: if (WARN_ON_ONCE(!btf_type_is_modifier(size_type) && !btf_type_is_var(size_type))) return NULL; Note that 'return NULL' is the correct behavior as we don't want a DECL_TAG type to be used as a btf_{key,value}_type_id even for the case like 'DECL_TAG -> STRUCT'. So there is no correctness issue here, we just want to silence warning. To silence the warning, I added DECL_TAG as one of kinds in btf_type_nosize() which will cause btf_type_id_size() returning NULL earlier without the warning. [1] https://lore.kernel.org/bpf/000000000000e0df8d05fc75ba86@google.com/

Affected products

Linux kernel: 5.16 — fixed in 6.5

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.5. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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