CVE-2022-49080 | mm/mempolicy: fix mpol_new leak in shared_policy_replace

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/mempolicy: fix mpol_new leak in shared_policy_replace If mpol_new is allocated but not used in restart loop, mpol_new will be freed via mpol_put before returning to the caller. But refcnt is not initialized yet, so mpol_put could not do the right things and might leak the unused mpol_new. This would happen if mempolicy was updated on the shared shmem file while the sp->lock has been dropped during the memory allocation. This issue could be triggered easily with the below code snippet if there are many processes doing the below work at the same time: shmid = shmget((key_t)5566, 1024 * PAGE_SIZE, 0666|IPC_CREAT); shm = shmat(shmid, 0, 0); loop many times { mbind(shm, 1024 * PAGE_SIZE, MPOL_LOCAL, mask, maxnode, 0); mbind(shm + 128 * PAGE_SIZE, 128 * PAGE_SIZE, MPOL_DEFAULT, mask, maxnode, 0); }

Published: 2025-02-26 Last update: 2025-09-23 Assigner: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67 Source: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67

Conclusion & alert: CVE-2022-49080 is rated Low Risk (23.3/100): CVSS Medium severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.03%). Mandatory action: Monitor for updates and reassess as exploit intelligence or EPSS changes.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2022-49080

EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).

# Date Old EPSS score New EPSS score Delta (New - Old)
1 2025-11-19 0.05% 0.03% -0.03%
2 2025-11-18 0.03% 0.05% +0.03%
3 2025-09-25 0.03%

Full EPSS history (11 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2022-49080

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
5.5 3.1 MEDIUM
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:L)
They already need access on the box, or another person has to do something wrong; it’s not a remote drive-by.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:L)
A normal user session is enough; they don’t have to be admin.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.
1.8 3.6 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2022-49080

OS Trackers for CVE-2022-49080

vendor priority summary link
debian not yet assigned CVE-2022-49080 not yet assigned priority: Debian including 1 source packages (linux), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2022-49080
redhat medium https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2022-49080
suse high https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2022-49080/
ubuntu medium CVE-2022-49080 medium priority: Ubuntu including 158 source packages (linux, linux-allwinner-5.19, …), 1551 status rows across 10 suites (bionic, focal, jammy, noble, oracular, plucky, questing, trusty, upstream, xenial): DNE 1145, ignored 149, released 145, not-affected 108, needed 4. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2022-49080

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2022-49080

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
linux linux_kernel >= 3.8.1, < 4.9.311 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 4.10, < 4.14.276 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 4.15, < 4.19.238 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 4.20, < 5.4.189 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 5.5, < 5.10.111 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 5.11, < 5.15.34 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 5.16, < 5.16.20 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 5.17, < 5.17.3 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 3.8 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:3.8:-:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 3.8 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:3.8:rc2:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 3.8 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:3.8:rc3:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 3.8 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:3.8:rc4:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 3.8 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:3.8:rc5:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 3.8 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:3.8:rc6:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 3.8 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:3.8:rc7:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 5.18 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:5.18:rc1:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2022-49080

cvelogic Threat Intelligence