From 09833d99db36d74456a4d13eb29c32d56ff8f2b6 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Alexander Potapenko Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2026 10:54:10 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] mm/kfence: disable KFENCE upon KASAN HW tags enablement KFENCE does not currently support KASAN hardware tags. As a result, the two features are incompatible when enabled simultaneously. Given that MTE provides deterministic protection and KFENCE is a sampling-based debugging tool, prioritize the stronger hardware protections. Disable KFENCE initialization and free the pre-allocated pool if KASAN hardware tags are detected to ensure the system maintains the security guarantees provided by MTE. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20260213095410.1862978-1-glider@google.com Fixes: 0ce20dd84089 ("mm: add Kernel Electric-Fence infrastructure") Signed-off-by: Alexander Potapenko Suggested-by: Marco Elver Reviewed-by: Marco Elver Cc: Andrey Konovalov Cc: Andrey Ryabinin Cc: Dmitry Vyukov Cc: Ernesto Martinez Garcia Cc: Greg KH Cc: Kees Cook Cc: Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton --- mm/kfence/core.c | 15 +++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 15 insertions(+) diff --git a/mm/kfence/core.c b/mm/kfence/core.c index b4ea3262c925..b5aedf505cec 100644 --- a/mm/kfence/core.c +++ b/mm/kfence/core.c @@ -13,6 +13,7 @@ #include #include #include +#include #include #include #include @@ -916,6 +917,20 @@ void __init kfence_alloc_pool_and_metadata(void) if (!kfence_sample_interval) return; + /* + * If KASAN hardware tags are enabled, disable KFENCE, because it + * does not support MTE yet. + */ + if (kasan_hw_tags_enabled()) { + pr_info("disabled as KASAN HW tags are enabled\n"); + if (__kfence_pool) { + memblock_free(__kfence_pool, KFENCE_POOL_SIZE); + __kfence_pool = NULL; + } + kfence_sample_interval = 0; + return; + } + /* * If the pool has already been initialized by arch, there is no need to * re-allocate the memory pool.