CVE-2026-23383: bpf, arm64: Force 8-byte alignment for JIT buffer to prevent atomic tearing

Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v3.1)
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: 2026-03-25 · updated 2026-10-30

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: bpf, arm64: Force 8-byte alignment for JIT buffer to prevent atomic tearing struct bpf_plt contains a u64 target field. Currently, the BPF JIT allocator requests an alignment of 4 bytes (sizeof(u32)) for the JIT buffer. Because the base address of the JIT buffer can be 4-byte aligned (e.g., ending in 0x4 or 0xc), the relative padding logic in build_plt() fails to ensure that target lands on an 8-byte boundary. This leads to two issues: 1. UBSAN reports misaligned-access warnings when dereferencing the structure. 2. More critically, target is updated concurrently via WRITE_ONCE() in bpf_arch_text_poke() while the JIT'd code executes ldr. On arm64, 64-bit loads/stores are only guaranteed to be single-copy atomic if they are 64-bit aligned. A misaligned target risks a torn read, causing the JIT to jump to a corrupted address. Fix this by increasing the allocation alignment requirement to 8 bytes (sizeof(u64)) in bpf_jit_binary_pack_alloc(). This anchors the base of the JIT buffer to an 8-byte boundary, allowing the relative padding math in build_plt() to correctly align the target field.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 6.0.1 before 6.12.77; from 6.13 before 6.18.17; from 6.19 before 6.19.7; 7.0-rc1, 7.0-rc2, 7.0-rc3, 7.0-rc4, 7.0-rc5, 7.0-rc6 (+1); 6.0 — fixed in 6.12.77, 6.18.17, 6.19.7
Linux: 6.0 — fixed in 7.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.12.77, 6.18.17, 6.19.7; Linux 7.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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