CVE-2022-49947 binder: fix alloc->vma_vm_mm null-ptr dereference

What is CVE-2022-49947?

CVE-2022-49947 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 18 Jun 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:

binder: fix alloc->vma_vm_mm null-ptr dereference

Syzbot reported a couple issues introduced by commit 44e602b4e52f ("binder_alloc: add missing mmap_lock calls when using the VMA"), in which we attempt to acquire the mmap_lock when alloc->vma_vm_mm has not been initialized yet.

This can happen if a binder_proc receives a transaction without having previously called mmap() to setup the binder_proc->alloc space in [1]. Also, a similar issue occurs via binder_alloc_print_pages() when we try to dump the debugfs binder stats file in [2].

Sample of syzbot's crash report: ================================================================== KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x0000000000000128-0x000000000000012f] CPU: 0 PID: 3755 Comm: syz-executor229 Not tainted 6.0.0-rc1-next-20220819-syzkaller #0 syz-executor229[3755] cmdline: ./syz-executor2294415195 Hardware name: Google Google Compute Engine/Google Compute Engine, BIOS Google 07/22/2022 RIP: 0010:__lock_acquire+0xd83/0x56d0 kernel/locking/lockdep.c:4923 [...] Call Trace: <TASK> lock_acquire kernel/locking/lockdep.c:5666 [inline] lock_acquire+0x1ab/0x570 kernel/locking/lockdep.c:5631 down_read+0x98/0x450 kernel/locking/rwsem.c:1499 mmap_read_lock include/linux/mmap_lock.h:117 [inline] binder_alloc_new_buf_locked drivers/android/binder_alloc.c:405 [inline] binder_alloc_new_buf+0xa5/0x19e0 drivers/android/binder_alloc.c:593 binder_transaction+0x242e/0x9a80 drivers/android/binder.c:3199 binder_thread_write+0x664/0x3220 drivers/android/binder.c:3986 binder_ioctl_write_read drivers/android/binder.c:5036 [inline] binder_ioctl+0x3470/0x6d00 drivers/android/binder.c:5323 vfs_ioctl fs/ioctl.c:51 [inline] __do_sys_ioctl fs/ioctl.c:870 [inline] __se_sys_ioctl fs/ioctl.c:856 [inline] __x64_sys_ioctl+0x193/0x200 fs/ioctl.c:856 do_syscall_x64 arch/x86/entry/common.c:50 [inline] do_syscall_64+0x35/0xb0 arch/x86/entry/common.c:80 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x63/0xcd [...] ==================================================================

Fix these issues by setting up alloc->vma_vm_mm pointer during open() and caching directly from current->mm. This guarantees we have a valid reference to take the mmap_lock during scenarios described above.

[1] https://syzkaller.appspot.com/bug?extid=f7dc54e5be28950ac459 [2] https://syzkaller.appspot.com/bug?extid=a75ebe0452711c9e56d9

Weakness: CWE-476

Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-49947?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2022-49947?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2022-49947 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-49947 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-2022-49947, GHSA-4hg9-w486-7gv5, UBUNTU-CVE-2022-49947.