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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2022-49889 json

ring-buffer: Check for NULL cpu_buffer in ring_buffer_wake_waiters()

published 2025-05-01 18 mo ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2025-12881

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 10%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

ring-buffer: Check for NULL cpu_buffer in ring_buffer_wake_waiters()

On some machines the number of listed CPUs may be bigger than the actual CPUs that exist. The tracing subsystem allocates a per_cpu directory with access to the per CPU ring buffer via a cpuX file. But to save space, the ring buffer will only allocate buffers for online CPUs, even though the CPU array will be as big as the nr_cpu_ids.

With the addition of waking waiters on the ring buffer when closing the file, the ring_buffer_wake_waiters() now needs to make sure that the buffer is allocated (with the irq_work allocated with it) before trying to wake waiters, as it will cause a NULL pointer dereference.

While debugging this, I added a NULL check for the buffer itself (which is OK to do), and also NULL pointer checks against buffer->buffers (which is not fine, and will WARN) as well as making sure the CPU number passed in is within the nr_cpu_ids (which is also not fine if it isn't).

Bugzilla: https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1204705

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 5.15.78, 5.20, 6.0.8
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 6.0.8-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2022-49889

  • kernel-64kb SLES 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP4-ESPOS 5.14.21-150400.24.167.1
  • kernel-syms SLES for SAP 15 SP4, SLES 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP4-LTSS +3 more 5.14.21-150400.24.167.1
  • kernel-source SLES for SAP 15 SP4, SLES 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP4-LTSS +3 more 5.14.21-150400.24.167.1
  • kernel-default SLES for SAP 15 SP4, SLES 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.4 +7 more 5.14.21-150400.24.167.1
  • kernel-zfcpdump SLES 15 SP4-LTSS, Manager Server 4.3 5.14.21-150400.24.167.1
  • kernel-obs-build SLES for SAP 15 SP4, SLES 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP4-LTSS +1 more 5.14.21-150400.24.167.1
  • kernel-default-base SLES for SAP 15 SP4, SLES 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.4 +5 more 5.14.21-150400.24.167.1.150400.24.84.1
  • kernel-64kb SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP5-ESPOS 5.14.21-150500.55.110.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2025:02262-1SUSE-SU-2025:02173-1SUSE-SU-2025:01995-1SUSE-SU-2025:01983-1SUSE-SU-2025:01982-1SUSE-SU-2025:01966-1

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-2022-49889 updated cvss 4.4

kernel: ring-buffer: Check for NULL cpu_buffer in ring_buffer_wake_waiters()

  • 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
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more
    affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 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

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
13 mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.20% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 10% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

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