Vulnerability · Published Feb 26, 2025 · Assigned by Linux

CVE-2022-49272ALSA: pcm: Fix potential AB/BA lock with buffer_mutex and mmap_lock

Medium 5.5

In plain English

A medium-severity security flaw in Linux from Linux. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.2% (higher than 10% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.

Severity (CVSS NVD)5.5Medium
Exploit odds (30 days)0.2%top 89.5% of all CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo reportsnot in CISA KEV
Attack toolingNoneno public tooling known

Official description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ALSA: pcm: Fix potential AB/BA lock with buffer_mutex and mmap_lock syzbot caught a potential deadlock between the PCM runtime->buffer_mutex and the mm->mmap_lock. It was brought by the recent fix to cover the racy read/write and other ioctls, and in that commit, I overlooked a (hopefully only) corner case that may take the revert lock, namely, the OSS mmap. The OSS mmap operation exceptionally allows to re-configure the parameters inside the OSS mmap syscall, where mm->mmap_mutex is already held. Meanwhile, the copy_from/to_user calls at read/write operations also take the mm->mmap_lock internally, hence it may lead to a AB/BA deadlock. A similar problem was already seen in the past and we fixed it with a refcount (in commit b248371628aa). The former fix covered only the call paths with OSS read/write and OSS ioctls, while we need to cover the concurrent access via both ALSA and OSS APIs now. This patch addresses the problem above by replacing the buffer_mutex lock in the read/write operations with a refcount similar as we've used for OSS. The new field, runtime->buffer_accessing, keeps the number of concurrent read/write operations. Unlike the former buffer_mutex protection, this protects only around the copy_from/to_user() calls; the other codes are basically protected by the PCM stream lock. The refcount can be a negative, meaning blocked by the ioctls. If a negative value is seen, the read/write aborts with -EBUSY. In the ioctl side, OTOH, they check this refcount, too, and set to a negative value for blocking unless it's already being accessed.

Affected packages & fixed versions

EcosystemPackageFixed inAdvisory
Debian:12linux5.17.3-1DEBIAN-CVE-2022-49272
Debian:13linux5.17.3-1DEBIAN-CVE-2022-49272
Debian:14linux5.17.3-1DEBIAN-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-allwinner-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-aws-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-aws-6.2no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-aws-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-azure-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-azure-6.2no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-azure-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-azure-fde-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-azure-fde-6.2no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-gcp-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-gcp-6.2no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-gcp-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-hwe-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-hwe-6.2no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-hwe-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-intel-iot-realtimeno fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-lowlatency-hwe-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-lowlatency-hwe-6.2no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-lowlatency-hwe-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-nvidia-6.2no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-nvidia-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-oem-5.17no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-oem-6.0no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-oem-6.1no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-oem-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-oracle-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-raspi-realtimeno fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-realtimeno fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-riscvno fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-riscv-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-riscv-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-starfive-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-starfive-6.2no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-starfive-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2022-49272

Affected products (as reported)

VendorProductVersions
Linux Linux 73867cb2bc7dfa7fbd219e53a0b68d253d8fda09 – before 7e9133607e1501c94881be35e118d8f84d96dcb4b3830197aa7413c65767cf5a1aa8775c83f0dbf7 – before 40f4cffbe13a51faf136faf5f9ef6847782cd59508d1807f097a63ea00a7067dad89c1c81cb2115e – before 9661bf674d6a82b76e4ae424438a8ce1e3ed855d8527c8f052fb42091c6569cb928e472376a4a889 – before 9017201e8d8c6d1472273361389ed431188584a047711ff10c7e126702cfa725f6d86ef529d15a5f – before 7777744e92a0b30e3e0cce2758d911837011ebd94d1b0ace2d56dc27cc4921eda7fae57f77f03eb5 – before abedf0d08c79d76da0d6fa0d5dbbc98871dcbc2edd2f8c684da3e226e5ec7a81c89ff5fd4a957a03 – before be9813ad2fc8f0885f5ce6925af0d993ce5da4e5dca947d4d26dbf925a64a6cfb2ddbc035e831a3d – before bc55cfd5718c7c23e5524582e9fa70b4d10f2433
Linux Linux 5.10.109 – before 5.10.1105.15.32 – before 5.15.335.16.18 – before 5.16.195.17.1 – before 5.17.2

References