CVE-2022-50452 net: sched: cake: fix null pointer access issue when cake_init() fails

Medium 5.5 Published 1 Oct 2025 Updated 11 May 2026

A null pointer dereference in the Linux kernel's CAKE qdisc can cause a system crash when initialization fails, requiring specific network configuration.

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-2022-50452?

CVE-2022-50452 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 1 Oct 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: sched: cake: fix null pointer access issue when cake_init() fails

When the default qdisc is cake, if the qdisc of dev_queue fails to be inited during mqprio_init(), cake_reset() is invoked to clear resources. In this case, the tins is NULL, and it will cause gpf issue.

The process is as follows: qdisc_create_dflt() cake_init() q->tins = kvcalloc(...) --->failed, q->tins is NULL ... qdisc_put() ... cake_reset() ... cake_dequeue_one() b = &q->tins[...] --->q->tins is NULL

The following is the Call Trace information: general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0xdffffc0000000000: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP KASAN KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x0000000000000000-0x0000000000000007] RIP: 0010:cake_dequeue_one+0xc9/0x3c0 Call Trace: <TASK> cake_reset+0xb1/0x140 qdisc_reset+0xed/0x6f0 qdisc_destroy+0x82/0x4c0 qdisc_put+0x9e/0xb0 qdisc_create_dflt+0x2c3/0x4a0 mqprio_init+0xa71/0x1760 qdisc_create+0x3eb/0x1000 tc_modify_qdisc+0x408/0x1720 rtnetlink_rcv_msg+0x38e/0xac0 netlink_rcv_skb+0x12d/0x3a0 netlink_unicast+0x4a2/0x740 netlink_sendmsg+0x826/0xcc0 sock_sendmsg+0xc5/0x100 ____sys_sendmsg+0x583/0x690 ___sys_sendmsg+0xe8/0x160 __sys_sendmsg+0xbf/0x160 do_syscall_64+0x35/0x80 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x46/0xb0 RIP: 0033:0x7f89e5122d04 </TASK>

Weakness: CWE-476

Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-50452?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2022-50452?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2022-50452 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-50452 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2022-50452, GHSA-x9pv-29h8-5m3m, UBUNTU-CVE-2022-50452.