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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2022-49067 json

powerpc: Fix virt_addr_valid() for 64-bit Book3E & 32-bit

published 2025-02-26 20 mo ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2022-55137

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.3%
EPSS 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 18%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

powerpc: Fix virt_addr_valid() for 64-bit Book3E & 32-bit

mpe: On 64-bit Book3E vmalloc space starts at 0x8000000000000000.

Because of the way __pa() works we have: __pa(0x8000000000000000) == 0, and therefore virt_to_pfn(0x8000000000000000) == 0, and therefore virt_addr_valid(0x8000000000000000) == true

Which is wrong, virt_addr_valid() should be false for vmalloc space. In fact all vmalloc addresses that alias with a valid PFN will return true from virt_addr_valid(). That can cause bugs with hardened usercopy as described below by Kefeng Wang:

When running ethtool eth0 on 64-bit Book3E, a BUG occurred:

usercopy: Kernel memory exposure attempt detected from SLUB object not in SLUB page?! (offset 0, size 1048)! kernel BUG at mm/usercopy.c:99 ... usercopy_abort+0x64/0xa0 (unreliable) __check_heap_object+0x168/0x190 __check_object_size+0x1a0/0x200 dev_ethtool+0x2494/0x2b20 dev_ioctl+0x5d0/0x770 sock_do_ioctl+0xf0/0x1d0 sock_ioctl+0x3ec/0x5a0 __se_sys_ioctl+0xf0/0x160 system_call_exception+0xfc/0x1f0 system_call_common+0xf8/0x200

The code shows below,

data = vzalloc(array_size(gstrings.len, ETH_GSTRING_LEN)); copy_to_user(useraddr, data, gstrings.len * ETH_GSTRING_LEN))

The data is alloced by vmalloc(), virt_addr_valid(ptr) will return true on 64-bit Book3E, which leads to the panic.

As commit 4dd7554a6456 ("powerpc/64: Add VIRTUAL_BUG_ON checks for __va and __pa addresses") does, make sure the virt addr above PAGE_OFFSET in the virt_addr_valid() for 64-bit, also add upper limit check to make sure the virt is below high_memory.

Meanwhile, for 32-bit PAGE_OFFSET is the virtual address of the start of lowmem, high_memory is the upper low virtual address, the check is suitable for 32-bit, this will fix the issue mentioned in commit 602946ec2f90 ("powerpc: Set max_mapnr correctly") too.

On 32-bit there is a similar problem with high memory, that was fixed in commit 602946ec2f90 ("powerpc: Set max_mapnr correctly"), but that commit breaks highmem and needs to be reverted.

We can't easily fix __pa(), we have code that relies on its current behaviour. So for now add extra checks to virt_addr_valid().

For 64-bit Book3S the extra checks are not necessary, the combination of virt_to_pfn() and pfn_valid() should yield the correct result, but they are harmless.

[mpe: Add additional change log detail]

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 5.4.190, 5.10.111, 5.15.34, 5.16.20, 5.17.3, 5.18
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 5.17.3-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2022-49067

  • linux Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-122.138
  • linux Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-37.39
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1081.88
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1011.14
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1084.92
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1008.12
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1008.10
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1029.33

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2022-49067

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

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-2022-49067 updated

kernel: powerpc: Fix virt_addr_valid() for 64-bit Book3E & 32-bit

  • 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 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

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

Exploit prediction

0.26% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 18% 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

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.