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CVE-2026-43331

x86/kexec: Disable KCOV instrumentation after load_segments()

Published: 5/8/2026 Last updated: 5/11/2026 Reserved: 5/1/2026

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. ]

CNA assigner: Linux (416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67) Requested by: n/a

Opam packages affected (29)

albatross cdrom conf-bpftool conf-libbpf conf-linux-libc-dev core core_unix hvsock mirage-block-unix mm ocaml-probes ortools_solvers orun rawlink rawlink-eio rawlink-lwt restricted shell solo5 solo5-bindings-hvt solo5-bindings-spt solo5-cross-aarch64 solo5-kernel-ukvm tracy-client tuntap uring vhd-format vhd-format-lwt xapi-stdext-unix

Products affected (4)

Product Vendor Version
Linux Linux 1.0.0
Linux Linux 1.1.0
Linux Linux unspecified
Linux Linux unspecified

References (6)