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Bug 029 bad non null inference - #13404

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Bug 029 bad non null inference#13404
eddyz87 wants to merge 3 commits into
kernel-patches:bpf-next_basefrom
eddyz87:bug-029-bad-non-null-inference

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@eddyz87 eddyz87 commented Aug 21, 2026

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eddyz87 force-pushed the bug-029-bad-non-null-inference branch from 68653e9 to 6c29e21 Compare August 22, 2026 00:00
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Signed-off-by: Eduard Zingerman <eddyz87@gmail.com>

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  "series": {
    "revision": 1,
    "change-id": "20260821-bug-029-bad-non-null-inference-adaaa966c0e5",
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Nicholas Carlini reported a bug when verifier can incorrectly infer
that a pointer is non-null. The bug occurs when two pointers are
compared and one of them has a type w/o PTR_MAYBE_NULL flag,
but which allows a value to be NULL at runtime.
Here is an example:

  // `a` is PTR_TO_MEM | MEM_RDONLY | PTR_UNTRUSTED
  // `a` is 0 at runtime.
  // `b` is PTR_TO_MAP_VALUE | PTR_MAYBE_NULL
  void *a = bpf_rdonly_cast(0, 0);
  int  *b = bpf_map_lookup_elem(...);

  if (a == b)
    *b = 42;  // verifier does not catch null pointer dereference

This happens because of a special case in check_cond_jmp_op(),
which attempts to strip PTR_MAYBE_NULL flags from pointer types,
when processing comparisons like `rA == rB`, if either rA or rB can't
be null.

The non-null property is derived based on the absence of
PTR_MAYBE_NULL flag on rA's or rB's type. But that is not sufficient
for types like PTR_TO_MEM, as in the example.

This patch replaces type_may_be_null() call with reg_not_null(),
which contains an allowlist of types for which absence of
PTR_MAYBE_NULL actually means that the value can't be NULL at runtime.

At the moment, the list in the reg_not_null() omits two types for
which PTR_MAYBE_NULL is applicable: PTR_TO_XDP_SOCK and PTR_TO_BUF.
In order to remain backward compatible, and assuming that only
comparison between pointers of the same type makes sense,
this commit extends reg_not_null(). W/o such an extension e.g.
verifier_jeq_infer_not_null/null_ptr_to_map_value fails.

reg_not_null() can be extended further, but I deem that out of scope
for the fix at hand. Explicit base_type(...) != PTR_TO_BTF_ID
checks in the check_cond_jmp_op() can be removed with migration to
reg_not_null(), but that is a behavioural change, as the special case
would start matching for PTR_TO_BTF_ID that is also is_trusted_reg().
I omit the behavioural change from this commit.

Fixes: befae75 ("bpf: propagate nullness information for reg to reg comparisons")
Suggested-by: Nicholas Carlini <npc@anthropic.com>
Signed-off-by: Eduard Zingerman <eddyz87@gmail.com>
A comparison between PTR_TO_MEM | MEM_RDONLY | PTR_UNTRUSTED and
PTR_TO_MAP_VALUE_OR_NULL should not infer that map pointer is not null.
A bug in check_cond_jmp_op() made such inference possible.

Signed-off-by: Eduard Zingerman <eddyz87@gmail.com>
@eddyz87
eddyz87 force-pushed the bug-029-bad-non-null-inference branch from 6c29e21 to d6c0a85 Compare August 22, 2026 00:31
@kernel-patches-daemon-bpf
kernel-patches-daemon-bpf Bot force-pushed the bpf-next_base branch 3 times, most recently from b8b6131 to 71e031f Compare August 23, 2026 20:38
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