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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2022-48953 json

rtc: cmos: Fix event handler registration ordering issue

published 2024-10-21 2 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2022-53832

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 15%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

rtc: cmos: Fix event handler registration ordering issue

Because acpi_install_fixed_event_handler() enables the event automatically on success, it is incorrect to call it before the handler routine passed to it is ready to handle events.

Unfortunately, the rtc-cmos driver does exactly the incorrect thing by calling cmos_wake_setup(), which passes rtc_handler() to acpi_install_fixed_event_handler(), before cmos_do_probe(), because rtc_handler() uses dev_get_drvdata() to get to the cmos object pointer and the driver data pointer is only populated in cmos_do_probe().

This leads to a NULL pointer dereference in rtc_handler() on boot if the RTC fixed event happens to be active at the init time.

To address this issue, change the initialization ordering of the driver so that cmos_wake_setup() is always called after a successful cmos_do_probe() call.

While at it, change cmos_pnp_probe() to call cmos_do_probe() after the initial if () statement used for computing the IRQ argument to be passed to cmos_do_probe() which is cleaner than calling it in each branch of that if () (local variable "irq" can be of type int, because it is passed to that function as an argument of type int).

Note that commit 6492fed7d8c9 ("rtc: rtc-cmos: Do not check ACPI_FADT_LOW_POWER_S0") caused this issue to affect a larger number of systems, because previously it only affected systems with ACPI_FADT_LOW_POWER_S0 set, but it is present regardless of that commit.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 5.10.163, 5.15.86, 6.0.14, 6.1
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 6.1.4-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2022-48953

  • linux Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-69.76
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1033.37
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1031.38
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1030.35
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1027.30
  • linux-kvm Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1030.35
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1035.42
  • linux-gkeop Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1017.22

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2022-48953

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • kernel-64kb SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP5 5.14.21-150500.55.88.1
  • kernel-syms SLE Module for Development Tools 15 SP5 5.14.21-150500.55.88.1
  • kernel-source SLE Module for Development Tools 15 SP5, SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP5 5.14.21-150500.55.88.1
  • kernel-default SLE Module for Legacy 15 SP5, SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP5, SLE Micro 5.5 +2 more 5.14.21-150500.55.88.1
  • kernel-zfcpdump SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP5 5.14.21-150500.55.88.1
  • kernel-obs-build SLE Module for Development Tools 15 SP5 5.14.21-150500.55.88.1
  • kernel-default-base SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP5, SLE Micro 5.5 5.14.21-150500.55.88.1.150500.6.39.4
  • kernel-64kb SLES 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP4-ESPOS 5.14.21-150400.24.141.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2025:0834-1SUSE-SU-2024:4364-1SUSE-SU-2024:4131-1SUSE-SU-2024:4082-1SUSE-SU-2024:3985-1SUSE-SU-2024:3983-1

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2022-48953 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: rtc: cmos: Fix event handler registration ordering issue

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more
    affected: workaround, no fix available “Fix deferred”

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
2 y ago

Exploit prediction

0.24% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 15% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Weakness
Technology feeds

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.