CVE-2026-43331

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

x86/kexec: Disable KCOV instrumentation after load_segments()

The load_segments() function changes segment registers, invalidating GS base

(which KCOV relies on for per-cpu data). When CONFIG_KCOV is enabled, any

subsequent instrumented C code call (e.g. native_gdt_invalidate()) begins

crashing the kernel in an endless loop.

To reproduce the problem, it's sufficient to do kexec on a KCOV-instrumented

kernel:

$ kexec -l /boot/otherKernel

$ kexec -e

The real-world context for this problem is enabling crash dump collection in

syzkaller. For this, the tool loads a panic kernel before fuzzing and then

calls makedumpfile after the panic. This workflow requires both CONFIG_KEXEC

and CONFIG_KCOV to be enabled simultaneously.

Adding safeguards directly to the KCOV fast-path (__sanitizer_cov_trace_pc())

is also undesirable as it would introduce an extra performance overhead.

Disabling instrumentation for the individual functions would be too fragile,

so disable KCOV instrumentation for the entire machine_kexec_64.c and

physaddr.c. If coverage-guided fuzzing ever needs these components in the

future, other approaches should be considered.

The problem is not relevant for 32 bit kernels as CONFIG_KCOV is not supported

there.

[ bp: Space out comment for better readability. ]