# CVE-2022-48853: Reinstate some of "swiotlb: rework "fix info leak with DMA_FROM_DEVICE""

> A flaw in the Linux kernel's swiotlb DMA handling allows local attackers to read sensitive memory contents via SCSI commands in protected guest environments.

- **Severity:** Medium 5.5 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Any signed-in user
- **Attackable:** Local or same network only
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** Yes
- **Published:** 16 Jul 2024
- **Updated:** 11 May 2026
- **Also known as:** DEBIAN-CVE-2022-48853, GHSA-p622-mwq3-26f2, UBUNTU-CVE-2022-48853

## What is CVE-2022-48853?

CVE-2022-48853 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 16 Jul 2024. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

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

swiotlb: fix info leak with DMA_FROM_DEVICE

The problem I'm addressing was discovered by the LTP test covering
cve-2018-1000204.

A short description of what happens follows:
1) The test case issues a command code 00 (TEST UNIT READY) via the SG_IO
   interface with: dxfer_len == 524288, dxdfer_dir == SG_DXFER_FROM_DEV
   and a corresponding dxferp. The peculiar thing about this is that TUR
   is not reading from the device.
2) In sg_start_req() the invocation of blk_rq_map_user() effectively
   bounces the user-space buffer. As if the device was to transfer into
   it. Since commit a45b599ad808 ("scsi: sg: allocate with __GFP_ZERO in
   sg_build_indirect()") we make sure this first bounce buffer is
   allocated with GFP_ZERO.
3) For the rest of the story we keep ignoring that we have a TUR, so the
   device won't touch the buffer we prepare as if the we had a
   DMA_FROM_DEVICE type of situation. My setup uses a virtio-scsi device
   and the  buffer allocated by SG is mapped by the function
   virtqueue_add_split() which uses DMA_FROM_DEVICE for the "in" sgs (here
   scatter-gather and not scsi generics). This mapping involves bouncing
   via the swiotlb (we need swiotlb to do virtio in protected guest like
   s390 Secure Execution, or AMD SEV).
4) When the SCSI TUR is done, we first copy back the content of the second
   (that is swiotlb) bounce buffer (which most likely contains some
   previous IO data), to the first bounce buffer, which contains all
   zeros.  Then we copy back the content of the first bounce buffer to
   the user-space buffer.
5) The test case detects that the buffer, which it zero-initialized,
  ain't all zeros and fails.

One can argue that this is an swiotlb problem, because without swiotlb
we leak all zeros, and the swiotlb should be transparent in a sense that
it does not affect the outcome (if all other participants are well
behaved).

Copying the content of the original buffer into the swiotlb buffer is
the only way I can think of to make swiotlb transparent in such
scenarios. So let's do just that if in doubt, but allow the driver
to tell us that the whole mapped buffer is going to be overwritten,
in which case we can preserve the old behavior and avoid the performance
impact of the extra bounce.

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-48853?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Linux kernel.

## How do I fix CVE-2022-48853?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2022-48853 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-48853 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

- [CVE-2026-53266](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-53266/): Linux Kernel Out-of-Bounds Write (high 8.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2013-6282](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2013-6282/): Linux Kernel Improper Input Validation (high 8.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2022-0185](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-0185/): Linux Kernel Heap-Based Buffer Overflow (high 8.4, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2013-2094](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2013-2094/): Linux Kernel Privilege Escalation (high 8.4, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2026-53362](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-53362/): Linux Kernel Unspecified (high 7.8, exploited in the wild)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2022-48853 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2022-48853 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 16 Jul 2024. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-48853 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Linux kernel. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-48853/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-48853/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2022-48853
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-48853
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2022-48853

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-48853/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.