# CVE-2022-50625: serial: amba-pl011: avoid SBSA UART accessing DMACR register

> A local attacker can cause a kernel crash in Linux SBSA UART drivers by triggering an invalid register access when DMA is enabled.

- **Severity:** Not scored
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Not needed
- **Attackable:** Local or same network only
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** Yes
- **Published:** 8 Dec 2025
- **Updated:** 11 May 2026
- **Also known as:** DEBIAN-CVE-2022-50625, GHSA-rcpg-h79p-wgf5, UBUNTU-CVE-2022-50625

## What is CVE-2022-50625?

CVE-2022-50625 is a vulnerability in Linux, published on 8 Dec 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:

serial: amba-pl011: avoid SBSA UART accessing DMACR register

Chapter "B Generic UART" in "ARM Server Base System Architecture" [1]
documentation describes a generic UART interface. Such generic UART
does not support DMA. In current code, sbsa_uart_pops and
amba_pl011_pops share the same stop_rx operation, which will invoke
pl011_dma_rx_stop, leading to an access of the DMACR register. This
commit adds a using_rx_dma check in pl011_dma_rx_stop to avoid the
access to DMACR register for SBSA UARTs which does not support DMA.

When the kernel enables DMA engine with "CONFIG_DMA_ENGINE=y", Linux
SBSA PL011 driver will access PL011 DMACR register in some functions.
For most real SBSA Pl011 hardware implementations, the DMACR write
behaviour will be ignored. So these DMACR operations will not cause
obvious problems. But for some virtual SBSA PL011 hardware, like Xen
virtual SBSA PL011 (vpl011) device, the behaviour might be different.
Xen vpl011 emulation will inject a data abort to guest, when guest is
accessing an unimplemented UART register. As Xen VPL011 is SBSA
compatible, it will not implement DMACR register. So when Linux SBSA
PL011 driver access DMACR register, it will get an unhandled data abort
fault and the application will get a segmentation fault:
Unhandled fault at 0xffffffc00944d048
Mem abort info:
  ESR = 0x96000000
  EC = 0x25: DABT (current EL), IL = 32 bits
  SET = 0, FnV = 0
  EA = 0, S1PTW = 0
  FSC = 0x00: ttbr address size fault
Data abort info:
  ISV = 0, ISS = 0x00000000
  CM = 0, WnR = 0
swapper pgtable: 4k pages, 39-bit VAs, pgdp=0000000020e2e000
[ffffffc00944d048] pgd=100000003ffff803, p4d=100000003ffff803, pud=100000003ffff803, pmd=100000003fffa803, pte=006800009c090f13
Internal error: ttbr address size fault: 96000000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP
...
Call trace:
 pl011_stop_rx+0x70/0x80
 tty_port_shutdown+0x7c/0xb4
 tty_port_close+0x60/0xcc
 uart_close+0x34/0x8c
 tty_release+0x144/0x4c0
 __fput+0x78/0x220
 ____fput+0x1c/0x30
 task_work_run+0x88/0xc0
 do_notify_resume+0x8d0/0x123c
 el0_svc+0xa8/0xc0
 el0t_64_sync_handler+0xa4/0x130
 el0t_64_sync+0x1a0/0x1a4
Code: b9000083 b901f001 794038a0 8b000042 (b9000041)
---[ end trace 83dd93df15c3216f ]---
note: bootlogd[132] exited with preempt_count 1
/etc/rcS.d/S07bootlogd: line 47: 132 Segmentation fault start-stop-daemon

This has been discussed in the Xen community, and we think it should fix
this in Linux. See [2] for more information.

[1] https://developer.arm.com/documentation/den0094/c/?lang=en
[2] https://lists.xenproject.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2022-11/msg00543.html

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-50625?


## How do I fix CVE-2022-50625?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2022-50625 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-50625 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2022-50625 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2022-50625 is a vulnerability in Linux, published on 8 Dec 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-2022-50625 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Linux. 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-2022-50625/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-50625/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2022-50625
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-50625
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2022-50625

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-50625/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.