CVE-2022-49808 net: dsa: don't leak tagger-owned storage on switch driver unbind

What is CVE-2022-49808?

CVE-2022-49808 is a medium-severity use after free vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 1 May 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:

net: dsa: don't leak tagger-owned storage on switch driver unbind

In the initial commit dc452a471dba ("net: dsa: introduce tagger-owned storage for private and shared data"), we had a call to tag_ops->disconnect(dst) issued from dsa_tree_free(), which is called at tree teardown time.

There were problems with connecting to a switch tree as a whole, so this got reworked to connecting to individual switches within the tree. In this process, tag_ops->disconnect(ds) was made to be called only from switch.c (cross-chip notifiers emitted as a result of dynamic tag proto changes), but the normal driver teardown code path wasn't replaced with anything.

Solve this problem by adding a function that does the opposite of dsa_switch_setup_tag_protocol(), which is called from the equivalent spot in dsa_switch_teardown(). The positioning here also ensures that we won't have any use-after-free in tagging protocol (*rcv) ops, since the teardown sequence is as follows:

dsa_tree_teardown -> dsa_tree_teardown_master -> dsa_master_teardown -> unsets master->dsa_ptr, making no further packets match the ETH_P_XDSA packet type handler -> dsa_tree_teardown_ports -> dsa_port_teardown -> dsa_slave_destroy -> unregisters DSA net devices, there is even a synchronize_net() in unregister_netdevice_many() -> dsa_tree_teardown_switches -> dsa_switch_teardown -> dsa_switch_teardown_tag_protocol -> finally frees the tagger-owned storage

Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-49808?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2022-49808?

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-2022-49808 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-49808 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-2022-49808, GHSA-m9hv-2rww-w638, UBUNTU-CVE-2022-49808.