CVE-2022-49266 block: fix rq-qos breakage from skipping rq_qos_done_bio()

What is CVE-2022-49266?

CVE-2022-49266 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:

block: fix rq-qos breakage from skipping rq_qos_done_bio()

a647a524a467 ("block: don't call rq_qos_ops->done_bio if the bio isn't tracked") made bio_endio() skip rq_qos_done_bio() if BIO_TRACKED is not set. While this fixed a potential oops, it also broke blk-iocost by skipping the done_bio callback for merged bios.

Before, whether a bio goes through rq_qos_throttle() or rq_qos_merge(), rq_qos_done_bio() would be called on the bio on completion with BIO_TRACKED distinguishing the former from the latter. rq_qos_done_bio() is not called for bios which wenth through rq_qos_merge(). This royally confuses blk-iocost as the merged bios never finish and are considered perpetually in-flight.

One reliably reproducible failure mode is an intermediate cgroup geting stuck active preventing its children from being activated due to the leaf-only rule, leading to loss of control. The following is from resctl-bench protection scenario which emulates isolating a web server like workload from a memory bomb run on an iocost configuration which should yield a reasonable level of protection.

# cat /sys/block/nvme2n1/device/model Samsung SSD 970 PRO 512GB # cat /sys/fs/cgroup/io.cost.model 259:0 ctrl=user model=linear rbps=834913556 rseqiops=93622 rrandiops=102913 wbps=618985353 wseqiops=72325 wrandiops=71025 # cat /sys/fs/cgroup/io.cost.qos 259:0 enable=1 ctrl=user rpct=95.00 rlat=18776 wpct=95.00 wlat=8897 min=60.00 max=100.00 # resctl-bench -m 29.6G -r out.json run protection::scenario=mem-hog,loops=1 ... Memory Hog Summary ==================

IO Latency: R p50=242u:336u/2.5m p90=794u:1.4m/7.5m p99=2.7m:8.0m/62.5m max=8.0m:36.4m/350m W p50=221u:323u/1.5m p90=709u:1.2m/5.5m p99=1.5m:2.5m/9.5m max=6.9m:35.9m/350m

Isolation and Request Latency Impact Distributions:

min p01 p05 p10 p25 p50 p75 p90 p95 p99 max mean stdev isol% 15.90 15.90 15.90 40.05 57.24 59.07 60.01 74.63 74.63 90.35 90.35 58.12 15.82 lat-imp% 0 0 0 0 0 4.55 14.68 15.54 233.5 548.1 548.1 53.88 143.6

Result: isol=58.12:15.82% lat_imp=53.88%:143.6 work_csv=100.0% missing=3.96%

The isolation result of 58.12% is close to what this device would show without any IO control.

Fix it by introducing a new flag BIO_QOS_MERGED to mark merged bios and calling rq_qos_done_bio() on them too. For consistency and clarity, rename BIO_TRACKED to BIO_QOS_THROTTLED. The flag checks are moved into rq_qos_done_bio() so that it's next to the code paths that set the flags.

With the patch applied, the above same benchmark shows:

# resctl-bench -m 29.6G -r out.json run protection::scenario=mem-hog,loops=1 ... Memory Hog Summary ==================

IO Latency: R p50=123u:84.4u/985u p90=322u:256u/2.5m p99=1.6m:1.4m/9.5m max=11.1m:36.0m/350m W p50=429u:274u/995u p90=1.7m:1.3m/4.5m p99=3.4m:2.7m/11.5m max=7.9m:5.9m/26.5m

Isolation and Request Latency Impact Distributions:

min p01 p05 p10 p25 p50 p75 p90 p95 p99 max mean stdev isol% 84.91 84.91 89.51 90.73 92.31 94.49 96.36 98.04 98.71 100.0 100.0 94.42 2.81 lat-imp% 0 0 0 0 0 2.81 5.73 11.11 13.92 17.53 22.61 4.10 4.68

Result: isol=94.42:2.81% lat_imp=4.10%:4.68 work_csv=58.34% missing=0%

Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-49266?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2022-49266?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2022-49266 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-49266 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-2022-49266, GHSA-3j4q-r565-vcj9, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-11-CVE-2022-49266, UBUNTU-CVE-2022-49266.