[PATCH 5.10.y] bpf: Enforce expected_attach_type for tailcall compatibility
From: Miguel Gazquez (Schneider Electric)
Date: Tue Sep 08 2026 - 11:11:19 EST
From: Daniel Borkmann <daniel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
[ Upstream commit 4540aed51b12bc13364149bf95f6ecef013197c0 ]
Yinhao et al. recently reported:
Our fuzzer tool discovered an uninitialized pointer issue in the
bpf_prog_test_run_xdp() function within the Linux kernel's BPF subsystem.
This leads to a NULL pointer dereference when a BPF program attempts to
deference the txq member of struct xdp_buff object.
The test initializes two programs of BPF_PROG_TYPE_XDP: progA acts as the
entry point for bpf_prog_test_run_xdp() and its expected_attach_type can
neither be of be BPF_XDP_DEVMAP nor BPF_XDP_CPUMAP. progA calls into a slot
of a tailcall map it owns. progB's expected_attach_type must be BPF_XDP_DEVMAP
to pass xdp_is_valid_access() validation. The program returns struct xdp_md's
egress_ifindex, and the latter is only allowed to be accessed under mentioned
expected_attach_type. progB is then inserted into the tailcall which progA
calls.
The underlying issue goes beyond XDP though. Another example are programs
of type BPF_PROG_TYPE_CGROUP_SOCK_ADDR. sock_addr_is_valid_access() as well
as sock_addr_func_proto() have different logic depending on the programs'
expected_attach_type. Similarly, a program attached to BPF_CGROUP_INET4_GETPEERNAME
should not be allowed doing a tailcall into a program which calls bpf_bind()
out of BPF which is only enabled for BPF_CGROUP_INET4_CONNECT.
In short, specifying expected_attach_type allows to open up additional
functionality or restrictions beyond what the basic bpf_prog_type enables.
The use of tailcalls must not violate these constraints. Fix it by enforcing
expected_attach_type in __bpf_prog_map_compatible().
Note that we only enforce this for tailcall maps, but not for BPF devmaps or
cpumaps: There, the programs are invoked through dev_map_bpf_prog_run*() and
cpu_map_bpf_prog_run*() which set up a new environment / context and therefore
these situations are not prone to this issue.
[ Fixed conflict, applied the changes to bpf_prog_array_compatible
instead of __bpf_prog_map_compatible. Dropped the guard testing for
BPF_MAP_TYPE_PROG_ARRAY as bpf_prog_array_compatible is only called on maps whose
map_type is already BPF_MAP_TYPE_PROG_ARRAY, so the check was always true ]
Fixes: 5e43f899b03a ("bpf: Check attach type at prog load time")
Reported-by: Yinhao Hu <dddddd@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Reported-by: Kaiyan Mei <M202472210@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Reviewed-by: Dongliang Mu <dzm91@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Daniel Borkmann <daniel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20250926171201.188490-1-daniel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Signed-off-by: Alexei Starovoitov <ast@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin <sashal@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Miguel Gazquez (Schneider Electric) <miguel.gazquez@xxxxxxxxxxx>
---
include/linux/bpf.h | 1 +
kernel/bpf/core.c | 4 ++++
2 files changed, 5 insertions(+)
diff --git a/include/linux/bpf.h b/include/linux/bpf.h
index 5d5d0bc7ca50..fb213524ccac 100644
--- a/include/linux/bpf.h
+++ b/include/linux/bpf.h
@@ -876,6 +876,7 @@ struct bpf_array_aux {
spinlock_t lock;
enum bpf_prog_type type;
bool jited;
+ enum bpf_attach_type expected_attach_type;
} owner;
/* Programs with direct jumps into programs part of this array. */
struct list_head poke_progs;
diff --git a/kernel/bpf/core.c b/kernel/bpf/core.c
index db613a97ee5f..c9b3fe8b250a 100644
--- a/kernel/bpf/core.c
+++ b/kernel/bpf/core.c
@@ -1795,10 +1795,14 @@ bool bpf_prog_array_compatible(struct bpf_array *array,
*/
array->aux->owner.type = fp->type;
array->aux->owner.jited = fp->jited;
+ array->aux->owner.expected_attach_type = fp->expected_attach_type;
ret = true;
} else {
ret = array->aux->owner.type == fp->type &&
array->aux->owner.jited == fp->jited;
+ if (ret &&
+ array->aux->owner.expected_attach_type != fp->expected_attach_type)
+ ret = false;
}
spin_unlock(&array->aux->owner.lock);
return ret;
---
base-commit: 2a3da1f4966798b0b48ce302944ad356b2c98b5d
change-id: 20260907-cve-2025-40123-e08968057032
Best regards,
--
Miguel Gazquez (Schneider Electric) <miguel.gazquez@xxxxxxxxxxx>