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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2022-49947 json

binder: fix alloc->vma_vm_mm null-ptr dereference

published 2025-06-18 16 mo ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2022-55229

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 13%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

binder: fix alloc->vma_vm_mm null-ptr dereference

Syzbot reported a couple issues introduced by commit 44e602b4e52f ("binder_alloc: add missing mmap_lock calls when using the VMA"), in which we attempt to acquire the mmap_lock when alloc->vma_vm_mm has not been initialized yet.

This can happen if a binder_proc receives a transaction without having previously called mmap() to setup the binder_proc->alloc space in [1]. Also, a similar issue occurs via binder_alloc_print_pages() when we try to dump the debugfs binder stats file in [2].

Sample of syzbot's crash report: ================================================================== KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x0000000000000128-0x000000000000012f] CPU: 0 PID: 3755 Comm: syz-executor229 Not tainted 6.0.0-rc1-next-20220819-syzkaller #0 syz-executor229[3755] cmdline: ./syz-executor2294415195 Hardware name: Google Google Compute Engine/Google Compute Engine, BIOS Google 07/22/2022 RIP: 0010:__lock_acquire+0xd83/0x56d0 kernel/locking/lockdep.c:4923 [...] Call Trace: <TASK> lock_acquire kernel/locking/lockdep.c:5666 [inline] lock_acquire+0x1ab/0x570 kernel/locking/lockdep.c:5631 down_read+0x98/0x450 kernel/locking/rwsem.c:1499 mmap_read_lock include/linux/mmap_lock.h:117 [inline] binder_alloc_new_buf_locked drivers/android/binder_alloc.c:405 [inline] binder_alloc_new_buf+0xa5/0x19e0 drivers/android/binder_alloc.c:593 binder_transaction+0x242e/0x9a80 drivers/android/binder.c:3199 binder_thread_write+0x664/0x3220 drivers/android/binder.c:3986 binder_ioctl_write_read drivers/android/binder.c:5036 [inline] binder_ioctl+0x3470/0x6d00 drivers/android/binder.c:5323 vfs_ioctl fs/ioctl.c:51 [inline] __do_sys_ioctl fs/ioctl.c:870 [inline] __se_sys_ioctl fs/ioctl.c:856 [inline] __x64_sys_ioctl+0x193/0x200 fs/ioctl.c:856 do_syscall_x64 arch/x86/entry/common.c:50 [inline] do_syscall_64+0x35/0xb0 arch/x86/entry/common.c:80 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x63/0xcd [...] ==================================================================

Fix these issues by setting up alloc->vma_vm_mm pointer during open() and caching directly from current->mm. This guarantees we have a valid reference to take the mmap_lock during scenarios described above.

[1] https://syzkaller.appspot.com/bug?extid=f7dc54e5be28950ac459 [2] https://syzkaller.appspot.com/bug?extid=a75ebe0452711c9e56d9

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 5.15.66, 5.19.8
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 6.0.2-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2022-49947

  • linux Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-57.63
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1027.31
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1026.33
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1024.29
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1022.25
  • linux-kvm Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1025.30
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1030.37
  • linux-gkeop Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1012.16

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2022-49947

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-2022-49947 updated

kernel: binder: fix alloc->vma_vm_mm null-ptr dereference

  • 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

0.23% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 13% 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

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