[PATCH] tracing: Fix use-after-free on field name/type of dynamic probe events
From: Henry Martin
Date: Mon Aug 24 2026 - 03:12:20 EST
Fields of a probe-based dynamic event (kprobe, uprobe and eprobe
events) are created from the argument name and type strings of the
trace_probe that first registers the event, as plain pointer
references without copying.
When several probes are appended to the same event, they share the
trace_event_call and its field list, which stays the one defined by
the primary probe. Deleting just the primary probe with
"-:group/event symbol" frees the trace_probe and its argument
strings, while the event call is kept registered by the remaining
sibling probes. field->name and field->type are left dangling, and
any field lookup - e.g. writing to events/<grp>/<ev>/filter - reads
freed memory:
BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in strcmp+0xa7/0xb0
Call trace:
trace_find_event_field+0xd6/0x220
parse_pred
process_preds
create_filter
apply_event_filter
event_filter_write
Make the field own its strings: duplicate name and type with
kstrdup_const() in __trace_define_field() and release them with
kfree_const() in trace_destroy_fields(). Fields of static trace
events still reference their kernel/module rodata string literals
directly, as kstrdup_const()/kfree_const() only touch memory that
was actually allocated.
The issue was found by the autokbug dynamic kernel fuzzer at Tencent
Yunding Lab.
Fixes: ca89bc071d5e4 ("tracing/kprobe: Add multi-probe per event support")
Signed-off-by: Henry Martin <bsdhenrymartin@xxxxxxxxx>
---
kernel/trace/trace_events.c | 14 ++++++++++++--
1 file changed, 12 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
diff --git a/kernel/trace/trace_events.c b/kernel/trace/trace_events.c
index c01b10b99f67e..ee3b93fa09ee8 100644
--- a/kernel/trace/trace_events.c
+++ b/kernel/trace/trace_events.c
@@ -123,8 +123,18 @@ static int __trace_define_field(struct list_head *head, const char *type,
if (!field)
return -ENOMEM;
- field->name = name;
- field->type = type;
+ field->name = kstrdup_const(name, GFP_TRACE);
+ if (!field->name) {
+ kmem_cache_free(field_cachep, field);
+ return -ENOMEM;
+ }
+
+ field->type = kstrdup_const(type, GFP_TRACE);
+ if (!field->type) {
+ kfree_const(field->name);
+ kmem_cache_free(field_cachep, field);
+ return -ENOMEM;
+ }
if (filter_type == FILTER_OTHER)
field->filter_type = filter_assign_type(type);
@@ -225,6 +235,8 @@ static void trace_destroy_fields(struct trace_event_call *call)
head = trace_get_fields(call);
list_for_each_entry_safe(field, next, head, link) {
list_del(&field->link);
+ kfree_const(field->name);
+ kfree_const(field->type);
kmem_cache_free(field_cachep, field);
}
}
--
2.43.0