CVE-2022-49006 tracing: Free buffers when a used dynamic event is removed

What is CVE-2022-49006?

CVE-2022-49006 is a high-severity use after free vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 21 Oct 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:

tracing: Free buffers when a used dynamic event is removed

After 65536 dynamic events have been added and removed, the "type" field of the event then uses the first type number that is available (not currently used by other events). A type number is the identifier of the binary blobs in the tracing ring buffer (known as events) to map them to logic that can parse the binary blob.

The issue is that if a dynamic event (like a kprobe event) is traced and is in the ring buffer, and then that event is removed (because it is dynamic, which means it can be created and destroyed), if another dynamic event is created that has the same number that new event's logic on parsing the binary blob will be used.

To show how this can be an issue, the following can crash the kernel:

# cd /sys/kernel/tracing # for i in `seq 65536`; do echo 'p:kprobes/foo do_sys_openat2 $arg1:u32' > kprobe_events # done

For every iteration of the above, the writing to the kprobe_events will remove the old event and create a new one (with the same format) and increase the type number to the next available on until the type number reaches over 65535 which is the max number for the 16 bit type. After it reaches that number, the logic to allocate a new number simply looks for the next available number. When an dynamic event is removed, that number is then available to be reused by the next dynamic event created. That is, once the above reaches the max number, the number assigned to the event in that loop will remain the same.

Now that means deleting one dynamic event and created another will reuse the previous events type number. This is where bad things can happen. After the above loop finishes, the kprobes/foo event which reads the do_sys_openat2 function call's first parameter as an integer.

# echo 1 > kprobes/foo/enable # cat /etc/passwd > /dev/null # cat trace cat-2211 [005] .... 2007.849603: foo: (do_sys_openat2+0x0/0x130) arg1=4294967196 cat-2211 [005] .... 2007.849620: foo: (do_sys_openat2+0x0/0x130) arg1=4294967196 cat-2211 [005] .... 2007.849838: foo: (do_sys_openat2+0x0/0x130) arg1=4294967196 cat-2211 [005] .... 2007.849880: foo: (do_sys_openat2+0x0/0x130) arg1=4294967196 # echo 0 > kprobes/foo/enable

Now if we delete the kprobe and create a new one that reads a string:

# echo 'p:kprobes/foo do_sys_openat2 +0($arg2):string' > kprobe_events

And now we can the trace:

# cat trace sendmail-1942 [002] ..... 530.136320: foo: (do_sys_openat2+0x0/0x240) arg1= cat-2046 [004] ..... 530.930817: foo: (do_sys_openat2+0x0/0x240) arg1="������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������" cat-2046 [004] ..... 530.930961: foo: (do_sys_openat2+0x0/0x240) arg1="������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������" cat-2046 [004] ..... 530.934278: foo: (do_sys_openat2+0x0/0x240) arg1="������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������" cat-2046 [004] ..... 530.934563: foo: (do_sys_openat2+0x0/0x240) arg1="��������������������������������������� ---truncated---

Weakness: CWE-416

Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-49006?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2022-49006?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Upgrade to the fixed version. These bugs are found with fuzzing and sanitisers and avoided by memory-safe languages. More about Use after free.

Is CVE-2022-49006 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-49006 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

• CVE-2026-53266 Linux Kernel Out-of-Bounds Write Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2013-6282 Linux Kernel Improper Input Validation Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2022-0185 Linux Kernel Heap-Based Buffer Overflow Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2013-2094 Linux Kernel Privilege Escalation Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2026-53362 Linux Kernel Unspecified Exploited High 7.8

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2022-49006, GHSA-xjr6-8999-vr65, UBUNTU-CVE-2022-49006.