Medium [CVE-2026-74314] Cancel special fields on map value recycle
This medium-severity Red Hat Linux advisory covers CVE-2026-74314 affecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9, Red Hat package: kernel-rt.
Android app · Google Play
Monitor future Red Hat Linux CVEs from your phone.
Choose a whole vendor or a precise platform, then receive matching security advisories by phone notification, email, or both. Coverage follows 32 official vendor sources and 160+ reviewed platform categories.
Summary
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: bpf: Cancel special fields on map value recycle Map update and delete paths currently call bpf_obj_free_fields() when a value is being replaced or recycled. That makes field destruction depend on the context of the update/delete operation.
For tracing programs this can include NMI context, where referenced kptr destructors, uptr unpinning, and graph root destruction are not generally safe. Introduce bpf_obj_cancel_fields() for the reusable-value path.
It only performs NMI-safe cleanup for timer, workqueue, and task_work fields. Fields that need full destruction are left attached to the recycled value and are destroyed by the final cleanup path instead.
Keep bpf_obj_free_fields() for final map destruction and for bpf_mem_alloc destructors. Preallocated hashtabs do not have allocator destructors, so teardown continues to walk the normal and extra elements and fully destroy their fields.
This deliberately relaxes the eager-free semantics of map update/delete for special fields. Programs that relied on a recycled map slot becoming empty immediately after update/delete were relying on behavior that cannot be implemented safely from every BPF execution context without offloading arbitrary destructors.
There is a chance this change breaks programs making assumptions regarding the eager freeing of fields.
Affected versions
No affected-version range was extracted from the source record. The vendor advisory is authoritative — check it before change work.
Official advisory · medium-confidence parse· fetched 2 hours ago·verify at source
Fixed versions
No fixed release is recorded yet. That does not prove no patch exists — confirm against the vendor advisory.
Official advisory · medium-confidence parse· fetched 2 hours ago·verify at source
Mitigation
The source record does not include mitigation steps. That is not a statement that no fix exists — read the vendor advisory below for the authoritative guidance.
Official advisory · medium-confidence parse· fetched 2 hours ago·verify at source
Discussion(0)
No comments yet. Share field notes, upgrade gotchas, or questions — verify against the vendor advisory before acting on community advice.
Sign in to join the discussion.