CVE-2022-50078 tracing/eprobes: Do not allow eprobes to use $stack, or % for regs
A local attacker can cause a kernel crash by using invalid register references in event probes, leading to a denial of service.
- 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
What is CVE-2022-50078?
CVE-2022-50078 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:
tracing/eprobes: Do not allow eprobes to use $stack, or % for regs
While playing with event probes (eprobes), I tried to see what would happen if I attempted to retrieve the instruction pointer (%rip) knowing that event probes do not use pt_regs. The result was:
BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000024 #PF: supervisor read access in kernel mode #PF: error_code(0x0000) - not-present page PGD 0 P4D 0 Oops: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP PTI CPU: 1 PID: 1847 Comm: trace-cmd Not tainted 5.19.0-rc5-test+ #309 Hardware name: Hewlett-Packard HP Compaq Pro 6300 SFF/339A, BIOS K01 v03.03 07/14/2016 RIP: 0010:get_event_field.isra.0+0x0/0x50 Code: ff 48 c7 c7 c0 8f 74 a1 e8 3d 8b f5 ff e8 88 09 f6 ff 4c 89 e7 e8 50 6a 13 00 48 89 ef 5b 5d 41 5c 41 5d e9 42 6a 13 00 66 90 <48> 63 47 24 8b 57 2c 48 01 c6 8b 47 28 83 f8 02 74 0e 83 f8 04 74 RSP: 0018:ffff916c394bbaf0 EFLAGS: 00010086 RAX: ffff916c854041d8 RBX: ffff916c8d9fbf50 RCX: ffff916c255d2000 RDX: 0000000000000000 RSI: ffff916c255d2008 RDI: 0000000000000000 RBP: 0000000000000000 R08: ffff916c3a2a0c08 R09: ffff916c394bbda8 R10: 0000000000000000 R11: 0000000000000000 R12: ffff916c854041d8 R13: ffff916c854041b0 R14: 0000000000000000 R15: 0000000000000000 FS: 0000000000000000(0000) GS:ffff916c9ea40000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 CR2: 0000000000000024 CR3: 000000011b60a002 CR4: 00000000001706e0 Call Trace: <TASK> get_eprobe_size+0xb4/0x640 ? __mod_node_page_state+0x72/0xc0 __eprobe_trace_func+0x59/0x1a0 ? __mod_lruvec_page_state+0xaa/0x1b0 ? page_remove_file_rmap+0x14/0x230 ? page_remove_rmap+0xda/0x170 event_triggers_call+0x52/0xe0 trace_event_buffer_commit+0x18f/0x240 trace_event_raw_event_sched_wakeup_template+0x7a/0xb0 try_to_wake_up+0x260/0x4c0 __wake_up_common+0x80/0x180 __wake_up_common_lock+0x7c/0xc0 do_notify_parent+0x1c9/0x2a0 exit_notify+0x1a9/0x220 do_exit+0x2ba/0x450 do_group_exit+0x2d/0x90 __x64_sys_exit_group+0x14/0x20 do_syscall_64+0x3b/0x90 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x46/0xb0
Obviously this is not the desired result.
Move the testing for TPARG_FL_TPOINT which is only used for event probes to the top of the "$" variable check, as all the other variables are not used for event probes. Also add a check in the register parsing "%" to fail if an event probe is used.
Weakness: CWE-476
Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-50078?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Linux kernel.
How do I fix CVE-2022-50078?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Is CVE-2022-50078 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-50078 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
Sources
Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2022-50078, GHSA-m974-q7mp-wv4j, UBUNTU-CVE-2022-50078.