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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2022-50550 json

blk-iolatency: Fix memory leak on add_disk() failures

published 2025-10-07 13 mo ago modified 2026-11-05 3 d ago also EUVD-2025-31985

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

Summary

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

blk-iolatency: Fix memory leak on add_disk() failures

When a gendisk is successfully initialized but add_disk() fails such as when a loop device has invalid number of minor device numbers specified, blkcg_init_disk() is called during init and then blkcg_exit_disk() during error handling. Unfortunately, iolatency gets initialized in the former but doesn't get cleaned up in the latter.

This is because, in non-error cases, the cleanup is performed by del_gendisk() calling rq_qos_exit(), the assumption being that rq_qos policies, iolatency being one of them, can only be activated once the disk is fully registered and visible. That assumption is true for wbt and iocost, but not so for iolatency as it gets initialized before add_disk() is called.

It is desirable to lazy-init rq_qos policies because they are optional features and add to hot path overhead once initialized - each IO has to walk all the registered rq_qos policies. So, we want to switch iolatency to lazy init too. However, that's a bigger change. As a fix for the immediate problem, let's just add an extra call to rq_qos_exit() in blkcg_exit_disk(). This is safe because duplicate calls to rq_qos_exit() become noop's.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.0.17, 6.1.2, 6.2
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 6.1.4-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2022-50550

  • kernel RHEL 9 5.14.0-362.8.1.el9_3
  • rv RHEL 9 5.14.0-362.8.1.el9_3
  • perf RHEL 9 5.14.0-362.8.1.el9_3
  • rtla RHEL 9 5.14.0-362.8.1.el9_3
  • bpftool RHEL 9 7.2.0-362.8.1.el9_3
  • libperf RHEL 9 5.14.0-362.8.1.el9_3
  • kernel-rt RHEL 9 5.14.0-362.8.1.el9_3
  • kernel-64k RHEL 9 5.14.0-362.8.1.el9_3

red hat advisories RHSA-2023:6583

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-2022-50550 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: blk-iolatency: Fix memory leak on add_disk() failures

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • 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 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

Exploit prediction

0.20% 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-401 Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime
Technology feeds

References

Sources

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