CVE-2022-49394
Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.
NVD · uneditedIn 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.
Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.
dbcve analysisA detailed technical summary for this CVE is being prepared.
Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.
NVD · CPE data>= 4.19.29, < 4.19.247>= 4.20.16, < 5.0>= 5.0.1, < 5.4.198>= 5.5, < 5.10.121>= 5.11, < 5.15.46>= 5.16, < 5.17.14>= 5.18, < 5.18.3= 5.0CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.
From the vector- Attack vector
- Local
- Complexity
- Low
- Privileges
- Low
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- None
- Integrity
- None
- Availability
- High
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.
dbcve · scoped4.19.2475.05.4.198
Upgrade to kernel version 4.19.247+ (for 4.19.x), 5.0+ (for 4.20.x), 5.4.198+ (for 5.0.x-5.4.x), or 5.10.121+ (for 5.5.x-5.10.x)
- 1. Identify the currently running Linux kernel version using `uname -r`
- 2. Determine the appropriate upgrade target based on your current kernel branch: for 4.19.x series upgrade to 4.19.247 or later; for 4.20.x upgrade to 5.0 or later; for 5.0.x-5.4.x upgrade to 5.4.198 or later; for 5.5.x-5.10.x upgrade to 5.10.121 or later
- 3. Update the kernel package using your distribution's package manager (e.g., `apt update && apt upgrade` for Debian/Ubuntu, `yum update` for RHEL/CentOS, or `dnf update` for Fedora)
- 4. Reboot the system to load the new kernel
- 5. After reboot, verify the running kernel version with `uname -r` to confirm the patch is applied
- 6. Monitor system I/O behavior to confirm the inflight count imbalance issue is resolved
Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.
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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.
Primary sourcesPractitioner notes
ContributedPeer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2022-49394 in production — separate from our analysis above.
The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.
- The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
- A config change or rule that shut the vector down
- A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon
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