# CVE-2022-49394: blk-iolatency: Fix inflight count imbalances and IO hangs on offline

> A race condition in the Linux kernel's blk-iolatency module can cause IO hangs and denial of service when cgroups are removed while IO is active.

- **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:** 23 May 2026
- **Also known as:** DEBIAN-CVE-2022-49394, GHSA-896c-jr9v-xc8g, UBUNTU-CVE-2022-49394

## What is CVE-2022-49394?

CVE-2022-49394 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:

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.

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-49394?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Linux kernel.

## How do I fix CVE-2022-49394?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2022-49394 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-49394 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-2022-49394 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2022-49394 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-2022-49394 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-2022-49394/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-49394/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2022-49394
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-49394
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2022-49394

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-49394/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.