CVE-2022-50849 pstore: Avoid kcore oops by vmap()ing with VM_IOREMAP

What is CVE-2022-50849?

CVE-2022-50849 is a denial of service vulnerability in Linux, published on 30 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:

pstore: Avoid kcore oops by vmap()ing with VM_IOREMAP

An oops can be induced by running 'cat /proc/kcore > /dev/null' on devices using pstore with the ram backend because kmap_atomic() assumes lowmem pages are accessible with __va().

Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address ffffff807ff2b000 Mem abort info: ESR = 0x96000006 EC = 0x25: DABT (current EL), IL = 32 bits SET = 0, FnV = 0 EA = 0, S1PTW = 0 FSC = 0x06: level 2 translation fault Data abort info: ISV = 0, ISS = 0x00000006 CM = 0, WnR = 0 swapper pgtable: 4k pages, 39-bit VAs, pgdp=0000000081d87000 [ffffff807ff2b000] pgd=180000017fe18003, p4d=180000017fe18003, pud=180000017fe18003, pmd=0000000000000000 Internal error: Oops: 96000006 [#1] PREEMPT SMP Modules linked in: dm_integrity CPU: 7 PID: 21179 Comm: perf Not tainted 5.15.67-10882-ge4eb2eb988cd #1 baa443fb8e8477896a370b31a821eb2009f9bfba Hardware name: Google Lazor (rev3 - 8) (DT) pstate: a0400009 (NzCv daif +PAN -UAO -TCO -DIT -SSBS BTYPE=--) pc : __memcpy+0x110/0x260 lr : vread+0x194/0x294 sp : ffffffc013ee39d0 x29: ffffffc013ee39f0 x28: 0000000000001000 x27: ffffff807ff2b000 x26: 0000000000001000 x25: ffffffc0085a2000 x24: ffffff802d4b3000 x23: ffffff80f8a60000 x22: ffffff802d4b3000 x21: ffffffc0085a2000 x20: ffffff8080b7bc68 x19: 0000000000001000 x18: 0000000000000000 x17: 0000000000000000 x16: 0000000000000000 x15: ffffffd3073f2e60 x14: ffffffffad588000 x13: 0000000000000000 x12: 0000000000000001 x11: 00000000000001a2 x10: 00680000fff2bf0b x9 : 03fffffff807ff2b x8 : 0000000000000001 x7 : 0000000000000000 x6 : 0000000000000000 x5 : ffffff802d4b4000 x4 : ffffff807ff2c000 x3 : ffffffc013ee3a78 x2 : 0000000000001000 x1 : ffffff807ff2b000 x0 : ffffff802d4b3000 Call trace: __memcpy+0x110/0x260 read_kcore+0x584/0x778 proc_reg_read+0xb4/0xe4

During early boot, memblock reserves the pages for the ramoops reserved memory node in DT that would otherwise be part of the direct lowmem mapping. Pstore's ram backend reuses those reserved pages to change the memory type (writeback or non-cached) by passing the pages to vmap() (see pfn_to_page() usage in persistent_ram_vmap() for more details) with specific flags. When read_kcore() starts iterating over the vmalloc region, it runs over the virtual address that vmap() returned for ramoops. In aligned_vread() the virtual address is passed to vmalloc_to_page() which returns the page struct for the reserved lowmem area. That lowmem page is passed to kmap_atomic(), which effectively calls page_to_virt() that assumes a lowmem page struct must be directly accessible with __va() and friends. These pages are mapped via vmap() though, and the lowmem mapping was never made, so accessing them via the lowmem virtual address oopses like above.

Let's side-step this problem by passing VM_IOREMAP to vmap(). This will tell vread() to not include the ramoops region in the kcore. Instead the area will look like a bunch of zeros. The alternative is to teach kmap() about vmalloc areas that intersect with lowmem. Presumably such a change isn't a one-liner, and there isn't much interest in inspecting the ramoops region in kcore files anyway, so the most expedient route is taken for now.

Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-50849?

How do I fix CVE-2022-50849?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2022-50849 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-50849 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2022-50849, GHSA-pm3x-6f4f-jm2x, UBUNTU-CVE-2022-50849.