CO-RE accessor strings are colon-separated indices that describe a path
from a root BTF type to a target field, e.g. "0:1:2" walks through
nested struct members. bpf_core_parse_spec() parses each component with
sscanf("%d"), so negative values like -1 are silently accepted. The
subsequent bounds checks (access_idx >= btf_vlen(t)) only guard the
upper bound and always pass for negative values because C integer
promotion converts the __u16 btf_vlen result to int, making the
comparison (int)(-1) >= (int)(N) false for any positive N.
When -1 reaches btf_member_bit_offset() it gets cast to u32 0xffffffff,
producing an out-of-bounds read far past the members array. A crafted
BPF program with a negative CO-RE accessor on any struct that exists in
vmlinux BTF (e.g. task_struct) crashes the kernel deterministically
during BPF_PROG_LOAD on any system with CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO_BTF=y
(default on major distributions). The bug is reachable with CAP_BPF:
BUG: unable to handle page fault for address: ffffed11818b6626
#PF: supervisor read access in kernel mode
#PF: error_code(0x0000) - not-present page
Oops: Oops: 0000 [#1] SMP KASAN NOPTI
CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 85 Comm: poc Not tainted 7.0.0-rc6 #18 PREEMPT(full)
RIP: 0010:bpf_core_parse_spec (tools/lib/bpf/relo_core.c:354)
RAX: 00000000ffffffff
Call Trace:
<TASK>
bpf_core_calc_relo_insn (tools/lib/bpf/relo_core.c:1321)
bpf_core_apply (kernel/bpf/btf.c:9507)
check_core_relo (kernel/bpf/verifier.c:19475)
bpf_check (kernel/bpf/verifier.c:26031)
bpf_prog_load (kernel/bpf/syscall.c:3089)
__sys_bpf (kernel/bpf/syscall.c:6228)
</TASK>
CO-RE accessor indices are inherently non-negative (struct member index,
array element index, or enumerator index), so reject them immediately
after parsing.
Fixes: ddc7c30426 ("libbpf: implement BPF CO-RE offset relocation algorithm")
Reported-by: Xiang Mei <xmei5@asu.edu>
Signed-off-by: Weiming Shi <bestswngs@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Emil Tsalapatis <emil@etsalapatis.com>
Acked-by: Paul Chaignon <paul.chaignon@gmail.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20260404161221.961828-2-bestswngs@gmail.com
Signed-off-by: Alexei Starovoitov <ast@kernel.org>
1c22483a2c