CVE-2022-49519 ath10k: skip ath10k_halt during suspend for driver state RESTARTING
A double free vulnerability in the ath10k Wi-Fi driver causes a kernel crash when suspend occurs during firmware recovery.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2022-49519?
CVE-2022-49519 is a high-severity use after free 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:
ath10k: skip ath10k_halt during suspend for driver state RESTARTING
Double free crash is observed when FW recovery(caused by wmi timeout/crash) is followed by immediate suspend event. The FW recovery is triggered by ath10k_core_restart() which calls driver clean up via ath10k_halt(). When the suspend event occurs between the FW recovery, the restart worker thread is put into frozen state until suspend completes. The suspend event triggers ath10k_stop() which again triggers ath10k_halt() The double invocation of ath10k_halt() causes ath10k_htt_rx_free() to be called twice(Note: ath10k_htt_rx_alloc was not called by restart worker thread because of its frozen state), causing the crash.
To fix this, during the suspend flow, skip call to ath10k_halt() in ath10k_stop() when the current driver state is ATH10K_STATE_RESTARTING. Also, for driver state ATH10K_STATE_RESTARTING, call ath10k_wait_for_suspend() in ath10k_stop(). This is because call to ath10k_wait_for_suspend() is skipped later in [ath10k_halt() > ath10k_core_stop()] for the driver state ATH10K_STATE_RESTARTING.
The frozen restart worker thread will be cancelled during resume when the device comes out of suspend.
Below is the crash stack for reference:
[ 428.469167] ------------[ cut here ]------------ [ 428.469180] kernel BUG at mm/slub.c:4150! [ 428.469193] invalid opcode: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP NOPTI [ 428.469219] Workqueue: events_unbound async_run_entry_fn [ 428.469230] RIP: 0010:kfree+0x319/0x31b [ 428.469241] RSP: 0018:ffffa1fac015fc30 EFLAGS: 00010246 [ 428.469247] RAX: ffffedb10419d108 RBX: ffff8c05262b0000 [ 428.469252] RDX: ffff8c04a8c07000 RSI: 0000000000000000 [ 428.469256] RBP: ffffa1fac015fc78 R08: 0000000000000000 [ 428.469276] CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 [ 428.469285] Call Trace: [ 428.469295] ? dma_free_attrs+0x5f/0x7d [ 428.469320] ath10k_core_stop+0x5b/0x6f [ 428.469336] ath10k_halt+0x126/0x177 [ 428.469352] ath10k_stop+0x41/0x7e [ 428.469387] drv_stop+0x88/0x10e [ 428.469410] __ieee80211_suspend+0x297/0x411 [ 428.469441] rdev_suspend+0x6e/0xd0 [ 428.469462] wiphy_suspend+0xb1/0x105 [ 428.469483] ? name_show+0x2d/0x2d [ 428.469490] dpm_run_callback+0x8c/0x126 [ 428.469511] ? name_show+0x2d/0x2d [ 428.469517] __device_suspend+0x2e7/0x41b [ 428.469523] async_suspend+0x1f/0x93 [ 428.469529] async_run_entry_fn+0x3d/0xd1 [ 428.469535] process_one_work+0x1b1/0x329 [ 428.469541] worker_thread+0x213/0x372 [ 428.469547] kthread+0x150/0x15f [ 428.469552] ? pr_cont_work+0x58/0x58 [ 428.469558] ? kthread_blkcg+0x31/0x31
Tested-on: QCA6174 hw3.2 PCI WLAN.RM.4.4.1-00288-QCARMSWPZ-1
Weakness: CWE-415
Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-49519?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Linux kernel.
How do I fix CVE-2022-49519?
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-2022-49519 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-49519 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
Sources
Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2022-49519, GHSA-qrwj-6qfp-4p9h, UBUNTU-CVE-2022-49519.