medium 5.5

CVE-2022-50144 json

soundwire: revisit driver bind/unbind and callbacks

published 2025-06-18 16 mo ago modified 2026-11-05 3 d ago also EUVD-2022-55410

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 9%
public exploits: 0; none known

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

In the SoundWire probe, we store a pointer from the driver ops into the 'slave' structure. This can lead to kernel oopses when unbinding codec drivers, e.g. with the following sequence to remove machine driver and codec driver.

/sbin/modprobe -r snd_soc_sof_sdw /sbin/modprobe -r snd_soc_rt711

The full details can be found in the BugLink below, for reference the two following examples show different cases of driver ops/callbacks being invoked after the driver .remove().

kernel: BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000150 kernel: Workqueue: events cdns_update_slave_status_work [soundwire_cadence] kernel: RIP: 0010:mutex_lock+0x19/0x30 kernel: Call Trace: kernel: ? sdw_handle_slave_status+0x426/0xe00 [soundwire_bus 94ff184bf398570c3f8ff7efe9e32529f532e4ae] kernel: ? newidle_balance+0x26a/0x400 kernel: ? cdns_update_slave_status_work+0x1e9/0x200 [soundwire_cadence 1bcf98eebe5ba9833cd433323769ac923c9c6f82]

kernel: BUG: unable to handle page fault for address: ffffffffc07654c8 kernel: Workqueue: pm pm_runtime_work kernel: RIP: 0010:sdw_bus_prep_clk_stop+0x6f/0x160 [soundwire_bus] kernel: Call Trace: kernel: <TASK> kernel: sdw_cdns_clock_stop+0xb5/0x1b0 [soundwire_cadence 1bcf98eebe5ba9833cd433323769ac923c9c6f82] kernel: intel_suspend_runtime+0x5f/0x120 [soundwire_intel aca858f7c87048d3152a4a41bb68abb9b663a1dd] kernel: ? dpm_sysfs_remove+0x60/0x60

This was not detected earlier in Intel tests since the tests first remove the parent PCI device and shut down the bus. The sequence above is a corner case which keeps the bus operational but without a driver bound.

While trying to solve this kernel oopses, it became clear that the existing SoundWire bus does not deal well with the unbind case.

Commit 528be501b7d4a ("soundwire: sdw_slave: add probe_complete structure and new fields") added a 'probed' status variable and a 'probe_complete' struct completion. This status is however not reset on remove and likewise the 'probe complete' is not re-initialized, so the bind/unbind/bind test cases would fail. The timeout used before the 'update_status' callback was also a bad idea in hindsight, there should really be no timing assumption as to if and when a driver is bound to a device.

An initial draft was based on device_lock() and device_unlock() was tested. This proved too complicated, with deadlocks created during the suspend-resume sequences, which also use the same device_lock/unlock() as the bind/unbind sequences. On a CometLake device, a bad DSDT/BIOS caused spurious resumes and the use of device_lock() caused hangs during suspend. After multiple weeks or testing and painful reverse-engineering of deadlocks on different devices, we looked for alternatives that did not interfere with the device core.

A bus notifier was used successfully to keep track of DRIVER_BOUND and DRIVER_UNBIND events. This solved the bind-unbind-bind case in tests, but it can still be defeated with a theoretical corner case where the memory is freed by a .remove while the callback is in use. The notifier only helps make sure the driver callbacks are valid, but not that the memory allocated in probe remains valid while the callbacks are invoked.

This patch suggests the introduction of a new 'sdw_dev_lock' mutex protecting probe/remove and all driver callbacks. Since this mutex is 'local' to SoundWire only, it does not interfere with existing locks and does not create deadlocks. In addition, this patch removes the 'probe_complete' completion, instead we directly invoke the 'update_status' from the probe routine. That removes any sort of timing dependency and a much better support for the device/driver model, the driver could be bound before the bus started, or eons after the bus started and the hardware would be properly initialized in all cases.

BugLink: https://github.com/thesofproject/linux/is ---truncated---

Patch / fix

fixed in 1 distros 3 links 4

Linux Linux 5.15.61, 5.18.18, 5.19.2, 6.0

debian ubuntu suse

linux Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 5.19.6-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2022-50144

linux Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-53.59
linux-aws Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1023.27
linux-gcp Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1022.29
linux-gke Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1020.25
linux-ibm Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1018.21
linux-kvm Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1021.26
linux-azure Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1023.29
linux-gkeop Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1008.12

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2022-50144

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-rt SLE Micro 5.5 5.14.21-150500.13.100.2
kernel-source-rt SLE Micro 5.5 5.14.21-150500.13.100.1
kernel-64kb SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP5-ESPOS 5.14.21-150500.55.113.1
kernel-syms SLES for SAP 15 SP5, SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP5-LTSS +1 more 5.14.21-150500.55.113.1
kernel-source SLES for SAP 15 SP5, SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.5 +2 more 5.14.21-150500.55.113.1
kernel-default SLES for SAP 15 SP5, SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.5 +3 more 5.14.21-150500.55.113.1
kernel-obs-build SLES for SAP 15 SP5, SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP5-LTSS +1 more 5.14.21-150500.55.113.1
kernel-default-base SLES for SAP 15 SP5, SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.5 +2 more 5.14.21-150500.55.113.1.150500.6.53.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2025:02321-1 SUSE-SU-2025:02264-1

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-2022-50144 updated 2026-11-05 cvss 5.5

kernel: soundwire: revisit driver bind/unbind and callbacks

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
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 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 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: 3 d ago (2026-11-05)

Exploit prediction

0.19% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 9% 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

CWE-476 NULL Pointer Dereference

Technology feeds

Linux kernel rss critical rss

References

Sources

CVE List CVE-2022-50144
NVD CVE-2022-50144

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.

Summary