As shown in [1], it is possible to corrupt a BPF ELF file such that
arbitrary BPF instructions are loaded by libbpf. This can be done by
setting a symbol (BPF program) section offset to a large (unsigned)
number such that <section start + symbol offset> overflows and points
before the section data in the memory.
Consider the situation below where:
- prog_start = sec_start + symbol_offset <-- size_t overflow here
- prog_end = prog_start + prog_size
prog_start sec_start prog_end sec_end
| | | |
v v v v
.....................|################################|............
The report in [1] also provides a corrupted BPF ELF which can be used as
a reproducer:
$ readelf -S crash
Section Headers:
[Nr] Name Type Address Offset
Size EntSize Flags Link Info Align
...
[ 2] uretprobe.mu[...] PROGBITS 0000000000000000 00000040
0000000000000068 0000000000000000 AX 0 0 8
$ readelf -s crash
Symbol table '.symtab' contains 8 entries:
Num: Value Size Type Bind Vis Ndx Name
...
6: ffffffffffffffb8 104 FUNC GLOBAL DEFAULT 2 handle_tp
Here, the handle_tp prog has section offset ffffffffffffffb8, i.e. will
point before the actual memory where section 2 is allocated.
This is also reported by AddressSanitizer:
=================================================================
==1232==ERROR: AddressSanitizer: heap-buffer-overflow on address 0x7c7302fe0000 at pc 0x7fc3046e4b77 bp 0x7ffe64677cd0 sp 0x7ffe64677490
READ of size 104 at 0x7c7302fe0000 thread T0
#0 0x7fc3046e4b76 in memcpy (/lib64/libasan.so.8+0xe4b76)
#1 0x00000040df3e in bpf_object__init_prog /src/libbpf/src/libbpf.c:856
#2 0x00000040df3e in bpf_object__add_programs /src/libbpf/src/libbpf.c:928
#3 0x00000040df3e in bpf_object__elf_collect /src/libbpf/src/libbpf.c:3930
#4 0x00000040df3e in bpf_object_open /src/libbpf/src/libbpf.c:8067
#5 0x00000040f176 in bpf_object__open_file /src/libbpf/src/libbpf.c:8090
#6 0x000000400c16 in main /poc/poc.c:8
#7 0x7fc3043d25b4 in __libc_start_call_main (/lib64/libc.so.6+0x35b4)
#8 0x7fc3043d2667 in __libc_start_main@@GLIBC_2.34 (/lib64/libc.so.6+0x3667)
#9 0x000000400b34 in _start (/poc/poc+0x400b34)
0x7c7302fe0000 is located 64 bytes before 104-byte region [0x7c7302fe0040,0x7c7302fe00a8)
allocated by thread T0 here:
#0 0x7fc3046e716b in malloc (/lib64/libasan.so.8+0xe716b)
#1 0x7fc3045ee600 in __libelf_set_rawdata_wrlock (/lib64/libelf.so.1+0xb600)
#2 0x7fc3045ef018 in __elf_getdata_rdlock (/lib64/libelf.so.1+0xc018)
#3 0x00000040642f in elf_sec_data /src/libbpf/src/libbpf.c:3740
The problem here is that currently, libbpf only checks that the program
end is within the section bounds. There used to be a check
`while (sec_off < sec_sz)` in bpf_object__add_programs, however, it was
removed by commit 6245947c1b3c ("libbpf: Allow gaps in BPF program
sections to support overriden weak functions").
Add a check for detecting the overflow of `sec_off + prog_sz` to
bpf_object__init_prog to fix this issue.
[1] https://github.com/lmarch2/poc/blob/main/libbpf/libbpf.md
Fixes: 6245947c1b3c ("libbpf: Allow gaps in BPF program sections to support overriden weak functions")
Reported-by: lmarch2 <2524158037@qq.com>
Signed-off-by: Viktor Malik <vmalik@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrii Nakryiko <andrii@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: Shung-Hsi Yu <shung-hsi.yu@suse.com>
Link: https://github.com/lmarch2/poc/blob/main/libbpf/libbpf.md
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/bpf/20250415155014.397603-1-vmalik@redhat.com
libbpf

This is the official home of the libbpf library.
Please use this Github repository for building and packaging libbpf and when using it in your projects through Git submodule.
Libbpf authoritative source code is developed as part of bpf-next Linux source
tree under
tools/lib/bpf subdirectory and is periodically synced to Github. As such, all the
libbpf changes should be sent to BPF mailing list,
please don't open PRs here unless you are changing Github-specific parts of libbpf
(e.g., Github-specific Makefile).
Libbpf and general BPF usage questions
Libbpf documentation can be found here. It's an ongoing effort and has ways to go, but please take a look and consider contributing as well.
Please check out libbpf-bootstrap and the companion blog post for the examples of building BPF applications with libbpf. libbpf-tools are also a good source of the real-world libbpf-based tracing tools.
See also "BPF CO-RE reference guide" for the coverage of practical aspects of building BPF CO-RE applications and "BPF CO-RE" for general introduction into BPF portability issues and BPF CO-RE origins.
All general BPF questions, including kernel functionality, libbpf APIs and their application, should be sent to bpf@vger.kernel.org mailing list. You can subscribe to it here and search its archive here. Please search the archive before asking new questions. It very well might be that this was already addressed or answered before.
bpf@vger.kernel.org is monitored by many more people and they will happily try to help you with whatever issue you have. This repository's PRs and issues should be opened only for dealing with issues pertaining to specific way this libbpf mirror repo is set up and organized.
Building libbpf
libelf is an internal dependency of libbpf and thus it is required to link
against and must be installed on the system for applications to work.
pkg-config is used by default to find libelf, and the program called can be
overridden with PKG_CONFIG.
If using pkg-config at build time is not desired, it can be disabled by
setting NO_PKG_CONFIG=1 when calling make.
To build both static libbpf.a and shared libbpf.so:
$ cd src
$ make
To build only static libbpf.a library in directory build/ and install them together with libbpf headers in a staging directory root/:
$ cd src
$ mkdir build root
$ BUILD_STATIC_ONLY=y OBJDIR=build DESTDIR=root make install
To build both static libbpf.a and shared libbpf.so against a custom libelf dependency installed in /build/root/ and install them together with libbpf headers in a build directory /build/root/:
$ cd src
$ PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/build/root/lib64/pkgconfig DESTDIR=/build/root make install
BPF CO-RE (Compile Once – Run Everywhere)
Libbpf supports building BPF CO-RE-enabled applications, which, in contrast to BCC, do not require Clang/LLVM runtime being deployed to target servers and doesn't rely on kernel-devel headers being available.
It does rely on kernel to be built with BTF type information, though. Some major Linux distributions come with kernel BTF already built in:
- Fedora 31+
- RHEL 8.2+
- OpenSUSE Tumbleweed (in the next release, as of 2020-06-04)
- Arch Linux (from kernel 5.7.1.arch1-1)
- Manjaro (from kernel 5.4 if compiled after 2021-06-18)
- Ubuntu 20.10
- Debian 11 (amd64/arm64)
If your kernel doesn't come with BTF built-in, you'll need to build custom kernel. You'll need:
pahole1.16+ tool (part ofdwarvespackage), which performs DWARF to BTF conversion;- kernel built with
CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO_BTF=yoption; - you can check if your kernel has BTF built-in by looking for
/sys/kernel/btf/vmlinuxfile:
$ ls -la /sys/kernel/btf/vmlinux
-r--r--r--. 1 root root 3541561 Jun 2 18:16 /sys/kernel/btf/vmlinux
To develop and build BPF programs, you'll need Clang/LLVM 10+. The following distributions have Clang/LLVM 10+ packaged by default:
- Fedora 32+
- Ubuntu 20.04+
- Arch Linux
- Ubuntu 20.10 (LLVM 11)
- Debian 11 (LLVM 11)
- Alpine 3.13+
Otherwise, please make sure to update it on your system.
The following resources are useful to understand what BPF CO-RE is and how to use it:
- BPF CO-RE reference guide
- BPF Portability and CO-RE
- HOWTO: BCC to libbpf conversion
- libbpf-tools in BCC repo contain lots of real-world tools converted from BCC to BPF CO-RE. Consider converting some more to both contribute to the BPF community and gain some more experience with it.
Distributions
Distributions packaging libbpf from this mirror:
Benefits of packaging from the mirror over packaging from kernel sources:
- Consistent versioning across distributions.
- No ties to any specific kernel, transparent handling of older kernels. Libbpf is designed to be kernel-agnostic and work across multitude of kernel versions. It has built-in mechanisms to gracefully handle older kernels, that are missing some of the features, by working around or gracefully degrading functionality. Thus libbpf is not tied to a specific kernel version and can/should be packaged and versioned independently.
- Continuous integration testing via GitHub Actions.
- Static code analysis via LGTM and Coverity.
Package dependencies of libbpf, package names may vary across distros:
- zlib
- libelf
bpf-next to Github sync
All the gory details of syncing can be found in scripts/sync-kernel.sh
script. See SYNC.md for instruction.
Some header files in this repo (include/linux/*.h) are reduced versions of
their counterpart files at
bpf-next's
tools/include/linux/*.h to make compilation successful.
License
This work is dual-licensed under BSD 2-clause license and GNU LGPL v2.1 license. You can choose between one of them if you use this work.
SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-2-Clause OR LGPL-2.1