Vulnerability in Linux

CVE-2022-49783

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: x86/fpu: Drop fpregs lock before inheriting FPU permissions Mike Galbraith reported the following against an old fork of preempt-rt but the same issue also applies to the current preempt-rt tree. BUG: sleeping function called from invalid context at kernel/locking/spinlock_rt.c:46 in_atomic(): 1, irqs_disabled(): 0, non_block: 0, pid: 1, name: systemd preempt_count: 1, expected: 0 RCU nest depth: 0, expected: 0 Preemption disabled at: fpu_clone CPU: 6 PID: 1 Comm: systemd Tainted: G E (unreleased) Call Trace: <TASK> dump_stack_lvl ? fpu_clone __might_resched rt_spin_lock fpu_clone ? copy_thread ? copy_process ? shmem_alloc_inode ? kmem_cache_alloc ? kernel_clone ? __do_sys_clone ? do_syscall_64 ? __x64_sys_rt_sigprocmask ? syscall_exit_to_user_mode ? do_syscall_64 ? syscall_exit_to_user_mode ? do_syscall_64 ? syscall_exit_to_user_mode ? do_syscall_64 ? exc_page_fault ? entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe </TASK> Mike says: The splat comes from fpu_inherit_perms() being called under fpregs_lock(), and us reaching the spin_lock_irq() therein due to fpu_state_size_dynamic() returning true despite static key __fpu_state_size_dynamic having never been enabled. Mike's assessment looks correct. fpregs_lock on a PREEMPT_RT kernel disables preemption so calling spin_lock_irq() in fpu_inherit_perms() is unsafe. This problem exists since commit 9e798e9aa14c ("x86/fpu: Prepare fpu_clone() for dynamically enabled features"). Even though the original bug report should not have enabled the paths at all, the bug still exists. fpregs_lock is necessary when editing the FPU registers or a task's FP state but it is not necessary for fpu_inherit_perms(). The only write of any FP state in fpu_inherit_perms() is for the new child which is not running yet and cannot context switch or be borrowed by a kernel thread yet. Hence, fpregs_lock is not protecting anything in the new child until clone() completes and can be dropped earlier. The siglock still needs to be acquired by fpu_inherit_perms() as the read of the parent's permissions has to be serialised. [ bp: Cleanup splat. ]

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 5.5 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.002 (5.8th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 6th percentile — 5.8% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2022-49783: held from 0.002 to 0.002.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.002 · newest: 0.002 · change: +0.000

Affected products

  • Linux — versions 9e798e9aa14c45fb94e47b30bf6347b369ce9df7, 5.16, 0
  • Linux Kernel — versions 6.1

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2022-49783?
CVE-2022-49783 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux. CVSS score: 5.5/10. Published 2025-05-01.
How severe is CVE-2022-49783?
Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.5 out of 10.