CVE-2022-49394 Vulnerability Analysis & Exploit Details

CVE-2022-49394
Vulnerability Scoring

Analysis In Progress

Attack Complexity Details

Attack Complexity:
Attack Complexity Analysis In Progress
Attack Vector:
Attack Vector Under Analysis
Privileges Required: None
No authentication is required for exploitation.
Scope:
Impact is confined to the initially vulnerable component.
User Interaction: None
No user interaction is necessary for exploitation.

CVE-2022-49394 Details

Status: Received on 26 Feb 2025, 07:01 UTC

Published on: 26 Feb 2025, 07:01 UTC

CVSS Release:

CVE-2022-49394 Vulnerability Summary

CVE-2022-49394: In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: blk-iolatency: Fix inflight count imbalances and IO hangs on offline iolatency needs to track the number of inflight IOs per cgroup. As this tracking can be expensive, it is disabled when no cgroup has iolatency configured for the device. To ensure that the inflight counters stay balanced, iolatency_set_limit() freezes the request_queue while manipulating the enabled counter, which ensures that no IO is in flight and thus all counters are zero. Unfortunately, iolatency_set_limit() isn't the only place where the enabled counter is manipulated. iolatency_pd_offline() can also dec the counter and trigger disabling. As this disabling happens without freezing the q, this can easily happen while some IOs are in flight and thus leak the counts. This can be easily demonstrated by turning on iolatency on an one empty cgroup while IOs are in flight in other cgroups and then removing the cgroup. Note that iolatency shouldn't have been enabled elsewhere in the system to ensure that removing the cgroup disables iolatency for the whole device. The following keeps flipping on and off iolatency on sda: echo +io > /sys/fs/cgroup/cgroup.subtree_control while true; do mkdir -p /sys/fs/cgroup/test echo '8:0 target=100000' > /sys/fs/cgroup/test/io.latency sleep 1 rmdir /sys/fs/cgroup/test sleep 1 done and there's concurrent fio generating direct rand reads: fio --name test --filename=/dev/sda --direct=1 --rw=randread \ --runtime=600 --time_based --iodepth=256 --numjobs=4 --bs=4k while monitoring with the following drgn script: while True: for css in css_for_each_descendant_pre(prog['blkcg_root'].css.address_of_()): for pos in hlist_for_each(container_of(css, 'struct blkcg', 'css').blkg_list): blkg = container_of(pos, 'struct blkcg_gq', 'blkcg_node') pd = blkg.pd[prog['blkcg_policy_iolatency'].plid] if pd.value_() == 0: continue iolat = container_of(pd, 'struct iolatency_grp', 'pd') inflight = iolat.rq_wait.inflight.counter.value_() if inflight: print(f'inflight={inflight} {disk_name(blkg.q.disk).decode("utf-8")} ' f'{cgroup_path(css.cgroup).decode("utf-8")}') time.sleep(1) The monitoring output looks like the following: inflight=1 sda /user.slice inflight=1 sda /user.slice ... inflight=14 sda /user.slice inflight=13 sda /user.slice inflight=17 sda /user.slice inflight=15 sda /user.slice inflight=18 sda /user.slice inflight=17 sda /user.slice inflight=20 sda /user.slice inflight=19 sda /user.slice <- fio stopped, inflight stuck at 19 inflight=19 sda /user.slice inflight=19 sda /user.slice If a cgroup with stuck inflight ends up getting throttled, the throttled IOs will never get issued as there's no completion event to wake it up leading to an indefinite hang. This patch fixes the bug by unifying enable handling into a work item which is automatically kicked off from iolatency_set_min_lat_nsec() which is called from both iolatency_set_limit() and iolatency_pd_offline() paths. Punting to a work item is necessary as iolatency_pd_offline() is called under spinlocks while freezing a request_queue requires a sleepable context. This also simplifies the code reducing LOC sans the comments and avoids the unnecessary freezes which were happening whenever a cgroup's latency target is newly set or cleared.

Assessing the Risk of CVE-2022-49394

Access Complexity Graph

The exploitability of CVE-2022-49394 depends on two key factors: attack complexity (the level of effort required to execute an exploit) and privileges required (the access level an attacker needs).

Exploitability Analysis for CVE-2022-49394

No exploitability data is available for CVE-2022-49394.

Understanding AC and PR

A lower complexity and fewer privilege requirements make exploitation easier. Security teams should evaluate these aspects to determine the urgency of mitigation strategies, such as patch management and access control policies.

Attack Complexity (AC) measures the difficulty in executing an exploit. A high AC means that specific conditions must be met, making an attack more challenging, while a low AC means the vulnerability can be exploited with minimal effort.

Privileges Required (PR) determine the level of system access necessary for an attack. Vulnerabilities requiring no privileges are more accessible to attackers, whereas high privilege requirements limit exploitation to authorized users with elevated access.

CVSS Score Breakdown Chart

Above is the CVSS Sub-score Breakdown for CVE-2022-49394, illustrating how Base, Impact, and Exploitability factors combine to form the overall severity rating. A higher sub-score typically indicates a more severe or easier-to-exploit vulnerability.

CIA Impact Analysis

Below is the Impact Analysis for CVE-2022-49394, showing how Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability might be affected if the vulnerability is exploited. Higher values usually signal greater potential damage.

Confidentiality: None
CVE-2022-49394 does not compromise confidentiality.
Integrity: None
CVE-2022-49394 does not impact data integrity.
Availability: None
CVE-2022-49394 does not affect system availability.

Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS)

The EPSS score estimates the probability that this vulnerability will be exploited in the near future.

EPSS Score: 0.044% (probability of exploit)

EPSS Percentile: 12.92% (lower percentile = lower relative risk)
This vulnerability is less risky than approximately 87.08% of others.

CVE-2022-49394 References

External References

CWE Common Weakness Enumeration

Unknown

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