A flaw was found in the Linux kernels eBPF verification code. It was discovered that eBPF ALU32 bounds tracking for bitwise ops (AND, OR and XOR) did not update the 32-bit bounds. By default accessing the eBPF verifier is only accessible to privileged users with CAP_SYS_ADMIN. A local user with the ability to insert eBPF instructions could use this flaw to crash the system or possibly escalate their privileges on the system.

Mitigation

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.