CVE-2021-33200

A flaw was found in kernel/bpf/verifier.c in BPF in the Linux kernel. An incorrect limit is enforced for pointer arithmetic operations which can be abused to perform out-of-bounds reads and writes in kernel memory, leading to local privilege escalation. The highest threat from this vulnerability is to data confidentiality and integrity as well as system availability.

The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.

The default Red Hat Enterprise Linux kernel prevents unprivileged users from being able to use eBPF by the kernel.unprivileged_bpf_disabled sysctl. This would require a privileged user with CAP_SYS_ADMIN or root to be able to abuse this flaw reducing its attack space.

For the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 the eBPF for unprivileged users is always disabled. For the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 to confirm the current state, inspect the sysctl with the command:

cat /proc/sys/kernel/unprivileged_bpf_disabled

The setting of 1 would mean that unprivileged users can not use eBPF, mitigating the flaw.

A kernel update will be required to mitigate the flaw for the root or users with CAP_SYS_ADMIN capabilities.