CVE-2022-50231 crypto: arm64/poly1305 - fix a read out-of-bound

What is CVE-2022-50231?

CVE-2022-50231 is a high-severity memory corruption 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:

crypto: arm64/poly1305 - fix a read out-of-bound

A kasan error was reported during fuzzing:

BUG: KASAN: slab-out-of-bounds in neon_poly1305_blocks.constprop.0+0x1b4/0x250 [poly1305_neon] Read of size 4 at addr ffff0010e293f010 by task syz-executor.5/1646715 CPU: 4 PID: 1646715 Comm: syz-executor.5 Kdump: loaded Not tainted 5.10.0.aarch64 #1 Hardware name: Huawei TaiShan 2280 /BC11SPCD, BIOS 1.59 01/31/2019 Call trace: dump_backtrace+0x0/0x394 show_stack+0x34/0x4c arch/arm64/kernel/stacktrace.c:196 __dump_stack lib/dump_stack.c:77 [inline] dump_stack+0x158/0x1e4 lib/dump_stack.c:118 print_address_description.constprop.0+0x68/0x204 mm/kasan/report.c:387 __kasan_report+0xe0/0x140 mm/kasan/report.c:547 kasan_report+0x44/0xe0 mm/kasan/report.c:564 check_memory_region_inline mm/kasan/generic.c:187 [inline] __asan_load4+0x94/0xd0 mm/kasan/generic.c:252 neon_poly1305_blocks.constprop.0+0x1b4/0x250 [poly1305_neon] neon_poly1305_do_update+0x6c/0x15c [poly1305_neon] neon_poly1305_update+0x9c/0x1c4 [poly1305_neon] crypto_shash_update crypto/shash.c:131 [inline] shash_finup_unaligned+0x84/0x15c crypto/shash.c:179 crypto_shash_finup+0x8c/0x140 crypto/shash.c:193 shash_digest_unaligned+0xb8/0xe4 crypto/shash.c:201 crypto_shash_digest+0xa4/0xfc crypto/shash.c:217 crypto_shash_tfm_digest+0xb4/0x150 crypto/shash.c:229 essiv_skcipher_setkey+0x164/0x200 [essiv] crypto_skcipher_setkey+0xb0/0x160 crypto/skcipher.c:612 skcipher_setkey+0x3c/0x50 crypto/algif_skcipher.c:305 alg_setkey+0x114/0x2a0 crypto/af_alg.c:220 alg_setsockopt+0x19c/0x210 crypto/af_alg.c:253 __sys_setsockopt+0x190/0x2e0 net/socket.c:2123 __do_sys_setsockopt net/socket.c:2134 [inline] __se_sys_setsockopt net/socket.c:2131 [inline] __arm64_sys_setsockopt+0x78/0x94 net/socket.c:2131 __invoke_syscall arch/arm64/kernel/syscall.c:36 [inline] invoke_syscall+0x64/0x100 arch/arm64/kernel/syscall.c:48 el0_svc_common.constprop.0+0x220/0x230 arch/arm64/kernel/syscall.c:155 do_el0_svc+0xb4/0xd4 arch/arm64/kernel/syscall.c:217 el0_svc+0x24/0x3c arch/arm64/kernel/entry-common.c:353 el0_sync_handler+0x160/0x164 arch/arm64/kernel/entry-common.c:369 el0_sync+0x160/0x180 arch/arm64/kernel/entry.S:683

This error can be reproduced by the following code compiled as ko on a system with kasan enabled:

#include <linux/module.h> #include <linux/crypto.h> #include <crypto/hash.h> #include <crypto/poly1305.h>

char test_data[] = "\x00\x01\x02\x03\x04\x05\x06\x07" "\x08\x09\x0a\x0b\x0c\x0d\x0e\x0f" "\x10\x11\x12\x13\x14\x15\x16\x17" "\x18\x19\x1a\x1b\x1c\x1d\x1e";

int init(void) { struct crypto_shash *tfm = NULL; char *data = NULL, *out = NULL;

tfm = crypto_alloc_shash("poly1305", 0, 0); data = kmalloc(POLY1305_KEY_SIZE - 1, GFP_KERNEL); out = kmalloc(POLY1305_DIGEST_SIZE, GFP_KERNEL); memcpy(data, test_data, POLY1305_KEY_SIZE - 1); crypto_shash_tfm_digest(tfm, data, POLY1305_KEY_SIZE - 1, out);

kfree(data); kfree(out); return 0; }

void deinit(void) { }

module_init(init) module_exit(deinit) MODULE_LICENSE("GPL");

The root cause of the bug sits in neon_poly1305_blocks. The logic neon_poly1305_blocks() performed is that if it was called with both s[] and r[] uninitialized, it will first try to initialize them with the data from the first "block" that it believed to be 32 bytes in length. First 16 bytes are used as the key and the next 16 bytes for s[]. This would lead to the aforementioned read out-of-bound. However, after calling poly1305_init_arch(), only 16 bytes were deducted from the input and s[] is initialized yet again with the following 16 bytes. The second initialization of s[] is certainly redundent which indicates that the first initialization should be for r[] only.

This patch fixes the issue by calling poly1305_init_arm64() instead o ---truncated---

Weakness: CWE-125

Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-50231?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2022-50231?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Upgrade to the fixed version. Memory-safe languages, compiler hardening and fuzzing prevent most new cases. More about Memory corruption.

Is CVE-2022-50231 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-50231 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-2022-50231, GHSA-77mj-4rpp-qvxc, UBUNTU-CVE-2022-50231.