[PATCH RFC bpf-next 0/8] bpf: add support for KASAN checks in JITed programs

Alexis Lothoré (eBPF Foundation)
2026-04-13T18:29:04Z

Hello,
this series aims to bring basic support for KASAN checks to BPF JITed
programs. This follows the first RFC posted in [1].

KASAN allows to spot memory management mistakes by reserving a fraction
of memory as "shadow memory" that will map to the rest of the memory and
allow its monitoring. Each memory-accessing instruction is then
instrumented at build time to call some ASAN check function, that will
analyze the corresponding bits in shadow memory, and if it detects the
access as invalid, trigger a detailed report. The goal of this series is
to replicate this mechanism for BPF programs when they are being JITed
into native instructions: that's then the (runtime) JIT compiler who is
in charge of inserting calls to the corresponding kasan checks, when a
program is being loaded into the kernel. This task involves:
- identifying at program load time the instructions performing memory
accesses
- identifying those accesses properties (size ? read or write ?) to
define the relevant kasan check function to call
- just before the identified instructions:
- perform the basic context saving (ie: saving registers)
- inserting a call to the relevant kasan check function
- restore context
- whenever the instrumented program executes, if it performs an invalid
access, it triggers a kasan report identical to those instrumented on
kernel side at build time.

As discussed in [1], this series is based on some choices and
assumptions:
- it focuses on x86_64 for now, and so only on KASAN_GENERIC
- not all memory accessing BPF instructions are being instrumented:
- it focuses on STX/LDX instructions
- it discards instructions accessing BPF program stack (already
monitored by page guards)
- it discards possibly faulting instructions, like BPF_PROBE_MEM or
BPF_PROBE_ATOMIC insns

The series is marked and sent as RFC:
- to allow collecting feedback early and make sure that it goes into the
right direction
- because it depends on Xu's work to pass data between the verifier and
JIT compilers. This work is not merged yet, see [2]. I have been
tracking the various revisions he sent on the ML and based my local
branch on his work
- because tests brought by this series currently can't run on BPF CI:
they expect kasan multishot to be enabled, otherwise the first test
will make all other kasan-related tests fail.
- because some cases like atomic loads/stores are not instrumented yet
(and are still making me scratch my head)
- because it will hopefully provide a good basis to discuss the topic at
LSFMMBPF (see [3])

Despite this series not being ready for integration yet, anyone
interested in running it locally can perform the following steps to run
the JITed KASAN instrumentation selftests:
- rebasing locally this series on [2]
- building and running the corresponding kernel with kasan_multi_shot
enabled
- running `test_progs -a kasan`

And should get a variety of KASAN tests executed for BPF programs:

#162/1 kasan/bpf_kasan_uaf_read_1:OK
#162/2 kasan/bpf_kasan_uaf_read_2:OK
#162/3 kasan/bpf_kasan_uaf_read_4:OK
#162/4 kasan/bpf_kasan_uaf_read_8:OK
#162/5 kasan/bpf_kasan_uaf_write_1:OK
#162/6 kasan/bpf_kasan_uaf_write_2:OK
#162/7 kasan/bpf_kasan_uaf_write_4:OK
#162/8 kasan/bpf_kasan_uaf_write_8:OK
#162/9 kasan/bpf_kasan_oob_read_1:OK
#162/10 kasan/bpf_kasan_oob_read_2:OK
#162/11 kasan/bpf_kasan_oob_read_4:OK
#162/12 kasan/bpf_kasan_oob_read_8:OK
#162/13 kasan/bpf_kasan_oob_write_1:OK
#162/14 kasan/bpf_kasan_oob_write_2:OK
#162/15 kasan/bpf_kasan_oob_write_4:OK
#162/16 kasan/bpf_kasan_oob_write_8:OK
#162 kasan:OK
Summary: 1/16 PASSED, 0 SKIPPED, 0 FAILED

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/bpf/DG7UG112AVBC.JKYISDTAM30T@bootlin.com/
[2] https://lore.kernel.org/bpf/cover.1776062885.git.xukuohai@hotmail.com/
[3] https://lore.kernel.org/bpf/DGGNCXX79H8O.2P6K8L1QW1M8K@bootlin.com/

Signed-off-by: Alexis Lothoré (eBPF Foundation) <alexis.lothore@bootlin.com>
---
Alexis Lothoré (eBPF Foundation) (8):
kasan: expose generic kasan helpers
bpf: mark instructions accessing program stack
bpf: add BPF_JIT_KASAN for KASAN instrumentation of JITed programs
bpf, x86: add helper to emit kasan checks in x86 JITed programs
bpf, x86: emit KASAN checks into x86 JITed programs
selftests/bpf: do not run verifier JIT tests when BPF_JIT_KASAN is enabled
bpf, x86: enable KASAN for JITed programs on x86
selftests/bpf: add tests to validate KASAN on JIT programs

arch/x86/Kconfig | 1 +
arch/x86/net/bpf_jit_comp.c | 106 +++++++++++++
include/linux/bpf.h | 2 +
include/linux/bpf_verifier.h | 2 +
include/linux/kasan.h | 13 ++
kernel/bpf/Kconfig | 9 ++
kernel/bpf/core.c | 10 ++
kernel/bpf/verifier.c | 7 +
mm/kasan/kasan.h | 10 --
tools/testing/selftests/bpf/prog_tests/kasan.c | 165 +++++++++++++++++++++
tools/testing/selftests/bpf/progs/kasan.c | 146 ++++++++++++++++++
.../testing/selftests/bpf/test_kmods/bpf_testmod.c | 79 ++++++++++
tools/testing/selftests/bpf/test_loader.c | 5 +
tools/testing/selftests/bpf/unpriv_helpers.c | 5 +
tools/testing/selftests/bpf/unpriv_helpers.h | 1 +
15 files changed, 551 insertions(+), 10 deletions(-)
---
base-commit: 7990a071b32887a1a883952e8cf60134b6d6fea0
change-id: 20260126-kasan-fcd68f64cd7b

Best regards,
--
Alexis Lothoré (eBPF Foundation) <alexis.lothore@bootlin.com>