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CVE-2026-43331

MEDIUM severity · CVSS 5.5
5.5CVSS MEDIUM

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: x86/kexec: Disable KCOV instrumentation after load_segments() The load_segments() function changes segment registers, invalidating GS base (which KCOV relies on for per-cpu data). When CONFIG_KCOV is enabled, any subsequent instrumented C code call (e.g. native_gdt_invalidate()) begins crashing the kernel in an endless loop. To reproduce the problem, it's sufficient to do kexec on a KCOV-instrumented kernel: $ kexec -l /boot/otherKernel $ kexec -e The real-world context for this problem is enabling crash dump collection in syzkaller. For this, the tool loads a panic kernel before fuzzing and then calls makedumpfile after the panic. This workflow requires both CONFIG_KEXEC and CONFIG_KCOV to be enabled simultaneously. Adding safeguards directly to the KCOV fast-path (__sanitizer_cov_trace_pc()) is also undesirable as it would introduce an extra performance overhead. Disabling instrumentation for the individual functions would be too fragile, so disable KCOV instrumentation for the entire machine_kexec_64.c and physaddr.c. If coverage-guided fuzzing ever needs these components in the future, other approaches should be considered. The problem is not relevant for 32 bit kernels as CONFIG_KCOV is not supported there. [ bp: Space out comment for better readability. ]

Impact & exploitability

Attack vectorLocal
Attack complexityLow
Privileges requiredLow
User interactionNone
Confidentiality impactNone
Integrity impactNone
Availability impactHigh
Exploit probability (EPSS)0%

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected products we track (1)

Linux Kernel

Recommendation

Apply the vendor fix in your normal patch cycle. Open any affected product above for its exact safe version.

Official patch: https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/1e3e98596c2769721ade0418434852fb3af4849a ↗

Additional information