CVE-2026-53106: bpf: Do not allow deleting local storage in NMI

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-06-24 · updated 2026-07-23
Weakness: CWE-401

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: bpf: Do not allow deleting local storage in NMI Currently, local storage may deadlock when deferring freeing selem or local storage through kfree_rcu(), call_rcu() or call_rcu_tasks_trace() in NMI or reentrant. Since deleting selem in NMI is an unlikely use case, partially mitigate it by returning error when calling from bpf_xxx_storage_delete() helpers in NMI. Note that, it is still possible to deadlock through reentrant. A full mitigation requires returning error when irqs_disabled() is true, which, however is too heavy-handed for bpf_xxx_storage_delete(). The long-term solution requires _nolock versions of call_rcu. Another possible solution is to defer the free through irq_work [0], but it would grow the size of selem, which is non-ideal. The check is only needed in bpf_selem_unlink(), which is used by helpers and syscalls. bpf_selem_unlink_nofail() is fine as it is called during map and owner tear down that never run in NMI or reentrant. [0] https://lore.kernel.org/bpf/20260205190233.912-1-alexei.starovoitov@gmail.com/

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 5.13 before 7.0.10 — fixed in 7.0.10

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 7.0.10. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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