[PATCH bpf-next v3 0/6] Fix invariant violations and improve branch detection

Paul Chaignon
2026-04-02T15:07:29Z

This patchset fixes invariant violations on register bounds. These
invariant violations cause a warning and happen when reg_bounds_sync is
trying to refine register bounds while walking an impossible branch.

This patchset takes this situation as an opportunity to improve
verification performance. That is, the verifier will use the invariant
violations as a signal that a branch cannot be taken and process it as
dead code.

This patchset implements this approach and covers it in selftests with
a new invariant violation case. Some of the logic in reg_bounds_sync
likely acts as a duplicate with logic from is_scalar_branch_taken. This
patchset does not attempt to remove superfluous logic from
is_scalar_branch_taken and leaves it to a future patchset (ex. once
syzbot has confirmed that all invariant violations are fixed).

In the future, there is also a potential opportunity to simplify
existing logic by merging reg_bounds_sync and range_bounds_violation
(have reg_bounds_sync error out on invariant violation). That is
however not needed to fix invariant violation, which we focus on in
this patchset.

Changes in v3:
- Rename and refactor the helper functions checking for tnum-related
invariant violations (Mykyta).
- Small changes to comment style in verifier changes and new selftest
(Mykyta).
- Rebased.
Changes in v2:
- Moved tmp registers to env in preparatory commit (Eduard).
- Updated reg_bounds_sync to bail out in case of ill-formed
registers, thus avoiding one set of invariant violation checks in
simulate_both_branches_taken (Eduard).
- Drop the Fixes tag to avoid misleading backporters (Shung-Hsi).
- Improve wording of commit descriptions (Shung-Hsi, Hari).
- Fix error in code comments (AI bot).
- Rebased.

Harishankar Vishwanathan (3):
bpf: Refactor reg_bounds_sanity_check
bpf: Exit early if reg_bounds_sync gets invalid inputs
bpf: Simulate branches to prune based on range violations

Paul Chaignon (3):
bpf: Use bpf_verifier_env buffers for reg_set_min_max
selftests/bpf: Cover invariant violation case from syzbot
selftests/bpf: Remove invariant violation flags

include/linux/bpf_verifier.h | 4 +-
kernel/bpf/verifier.c | 201 ++++++++++--------
.../selftests/bpf/progs/verifier_bounds.c | 51 +++--
3 files changed, 148 insertions(+), 108 deletions(-)

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2.43.0