# CVE-2022-50257: xen/gntdev: Prevent leaking grants

> A flaw in the Linux kernel's Xen grant device driver allows attackers to leak grant references, potentially exposing sensitive memory information.

- **Severity:** Medium 5.5 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H`)
- **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:** Yes
- **Published:** 15 Sep 2025
- **Updated:** 23 May 2026
- **Also known as:** DEBIAN-CVE-2022-50257, GHSA-4r8m-34qq-q8rf, UBUNTU-CVE-2022-50257

## What is CVE-2022-50257?

CVE-2022-50257 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 15 Sep 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:

xen/gntdev: Prevent leaking grants

Prior to this commit, if a grant mapping operation failed partially,
some of the entries in the map_ops array would be invalid, whereas all
of the entries in the kmap_ops array would be valid. This in turn would
cause the following logic in gntdev_map_grant_pages to become invalid:

  for (i = 0; i < map->count; i++) {
    if (map->map_ops[i].status == GNTST_okay) {
      map->unmap_ops[i].handle = map->map_ops[i].handle;
      if (!use_ptemod)
        alloced++;
    }
    if (use_ptemod) {
      if (map->kmap_ops[i].status == GNTST_okay) {
        if (map->map_ops[i].status == GNTST_okay)
          alloced++;
        map->kunmap_ops[i].handle = map->kmap_ops[i].handle;
      }
    }
  }
  ...
  atomic_add(alloced, &map->live_grants);

Assume that use_ptemod is true (i.e., the domain mapping the granted
pages is a paravirtualized domain). In the code excerpt above, note that
the "alloced" variable is only incremented when both kmap_ops[i].status
and map_ops[i].status are set to GNTST_okay (i.e., both mapping
operations are successful).  However, as also noted above, there are
cases where a grant mapping operation fails partially, breaking the
assumption of the code excerpt above.

The aforementioned causes map->live_grants to be incorrectly set. In
some cases, all of the map_ops mappings fail, but all of the kmap_ops
mappings succeed, meaning that live_grants may remain zero. This in turn
makes it impossible to unmap the successfully grant-mapped pages pointed
to by kmap_ops, because unmap_grant_pages has the following snippet of
code at its beginning:

  if (atomic_read(&map->live_grants) == 0)
    return; /* Nothing to do */

In other cases where only some of the map_ops mappings fail but all
kmap_ops mappings succeed, live_grants is made positive, but when the
user requests unmapping the grant-mapped pages, __unmap_grant_pages_done
will then make map->live_grants negative, because the latter function
does not check if all of the pages that were requested to be unmapped
were actually unmapped, and the same function unconditionally subtracts
"data->count" (i.e., a value that can be greater than map->live_grants)
from map->live_grants. The side effects of a negative live_grants value
have not been studied.

The net effect of all of this is that grant references are leaked in one
of the above conditions. In Qubes OS v4.1 (which uses Xen's grant
mechanism extensively for X11 GUI isolation), this issue manifests
itself with warning messages like the following to be printed out by the
Linux kernel in the VM that had granted pages (that contain X11 GUI
window data) to dom0: "g.e. 0x1234 still pending", especially after the
user rapidly resizes GUI VM windows (causing some grant-mapping
operations to partially or completely fail, due to the fact that the VM
unshares some of the pages as part of the window resizing, making the
pages impossible to grant-map from dom0).

The fix for this issue involves counting all successful map_ops and
kmap_ops mappings separately, and then adding the sum to live_grants.
During unmapping, only the number of successfully unmapped grants is
subtracted from live_grants. The code is also modified to check for
negative live_grants values after the subtraction and warn the user.

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-50257?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Linux kernel.

## How do I fix CVE-2022-50257?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2022-50257 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-50257 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

- [CVE-2026-53266](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-53266/): Linux Kernel Out-of-Bounds Write (high 8.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2013-6282](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2013-6282/): Linux Kernel Improper Input Validation (high 8.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2022-0185](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-0185/): Linux Kernel Heap-Based Buffer Overflow (high 8.4, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2013-2094](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2013-2094/): Linux Kernel Privilege Escalation (high 8.4, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2026-53362](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-53362/): Linux Kernel Unspecified (high 7.8, exploited in the wild)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2022-50257 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2022-50257 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 15 Sep 2025. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-50257 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Linux kernel. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-50257/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-50257/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2022-50257
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-50257
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2022-50257

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-50257/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.