[PATCH 1/2] tracing: Fix union collision of module and refcnt for dynamic events
From: Masami Hiramatsu (Google)
Date: Thu Jul 16 2026 - 22:52:18 EST
From: Masami Hiramatsu (Google) <mhiramat@xxxxxxxxxx>
In 'struct trace_event_call', the 'module' pointer and the 'refcnt'
atomic variable share the same memory space in a union. For dynamic
events, the union member is 'refcnt', which acts as an active
reference counter.
When a dynamic event (such as kprobe, uprobe, fprobe, eprobe, or
wprobe) has a non-zero reference count (e.g. due to active event
triggers or perf attachments), its 'call->module' evaluates to a
small non-zero integer instead of NULL.
When filtering or setting events for a specific module (e.g., writing
':mod:<module>' to 'set_event'), the code in
'__ftrace_set_clr_event_nolock()' and 'update_event_fields()' reads
'call->module' directly without checking whether the event is dynamic.
This causes the kernel to treat the small integer (refcnt) as a
'struct module' pointer, leading to a NULL/invalid pointer dereference
(Oops) when dereferencing the module name.
Fix this by ensuring that the 'TRACE_EVENT_FL_DYNAMIC' flag is checked
before treating 'call->module' as a valid pointer in these code paths.
Fixes: 4c86bc531e60 ("tracing: Add :mod: command to enabled module events")
Assisted-by: Antigravity:gemini-3.5-flash
Signed-off-by: Masami Hiramatsu (Google) <mhiramat@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
kernel/trace/trace_events.c | 4 +++-
1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
diff --git a/kernel/trace/trace_events.c b/kernel/trace/trace_events.c
index c46e623e7e0d..956692856fa8 100644
--- a/kernel/trace/trace_events.c
+++ b/kernel/trace/trace_events.c
@@ -1350,7 +1350,9 @@ __ftrace_set_clr_event_nolock(struct trace_array *tr, const char *match,
call = file->event_call;
/* If a module is specified, skip events that are not that module */
- if (module && (!call->module || strcmp(module_name(call->module), module)))
+ if (module &&
+ ((call->flags & TRACE_EVENT_FL_DYNAMIC) ||
+ !call->module || strcmp(module_name(call->module), module)))
continue;
name = trace_event_name(call);