# CVE-2022-49171: ext4: don't BUG if someone dirty pages without asking ext4 first

> An unprivileged user can trigger a kernel crash in the ext4 filesystem by dirtying pages without notification, causing a denial of service.

- **Severity:** Medium 5.5 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H`)
- **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:** 26 Feb 2025
- **Updated:** 11 May 2026
- **Also known as:** DEBIAN-CVE-2022-49171, GHSA-qgfx-vv83-vj4g, UBUNTU-CVE-2022-49171

## What is CVE-2022-49171?

CVE-2022-49171 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 26 Feb 2025. 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:

ext4: don't BUG if someone dirty pages without asking ext4 first

[un]pin_user_pages_remote is dirtying pages without properly warning
the file system in advance.  A related race was noted by Jan Kara in
2018[1]; however, more recently instead of it being a very hard-to-hit
race, it could be reliably triggered by process_vm_writev(2) which was
discovered by Syzbot[2].

This is technically a bug in mm/gup.c, but arguably ext4 is fragile in
that if some other kernel subsystem dirty pages without properly
notifying the file system using page_mkwrite(), ext4 will BUG, while
other file systems will not BUG (although data will still be lost).

So instead of crashing with a BUG, issue a warning (since there may be
potential data loss) and just mark the page as clean to avoid
unprivileged denial of service attacks until the problem can be
properly fixed.  More discussion and background can be found in the
thread starting at [2].

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/20180103100430.GE4911@quack2.suse.cz
[2] https://lore.kernel.org/r/Yg0m6IjcNmfaSokM@google.com

Weakness: CWE-617 (Reachable Assertion)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-49171?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Linux kernel.

## How do I fix CVE-2022-49171?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2022-49171 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-49171 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-2022-49171 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2022-49171 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 26 Feb 2025. 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-2022-49171 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-2022-49171/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-49171/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2022-49171
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-49171
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2022-49171

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-49171/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.