CVE-2022-49272 | ALSA: pcm: Fix potential AB/BA lock with buffer_mutex and mmap_lock

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ALSA: pcm: Fix potential AB/BA lock with buffer_mutex and mmap_lock syzbot caught a potential deadlock between the PCM runtime->buffer_mutex and the mm->mmap_lock. It was brought by the recent fix to cover the racy read/write and other ioctls, and in that commit, I overlooked a (hopefully only) corner case that may take the revert lock, namely, the OSS mmap. The OSS mmap operation exceptionally allows to re-configure the parameters inside the OSS mmap syscall, where mm->mmap_mutex is already held. Meanwhile, the copy_from/to_user calls at read/write operations also take the mm->mmap_lock internally, hence it may lead to a AB/BA deadlock. A similar problem was already seen in the past and we fixed it with a refcount (in commit b248371628aa). The former fix covered only the call paths with OSS read/write and OSS ioctls, while we need to cover the concurrent access via both ALSA and OSS APIs now. This patch addresses the problem above by replacing the buffer_mutex lock in the read/write operations with a refcount similar as we've used for OSS. The new field, runtime->buffer_accessing, keeps the number of concurrent read/write operations. Unlike the former buffer_mutex protection, this protects only around the copy_from/to_user() calls; the other codes are basically protected by the PCM stream lock. The refcount can be a negative, meaning blocked by the ioctls. If a negative value is seen, the read/write aborts with -EBUSY. In the ioctl side, OTOH, they check this refcount, too, and set to a negative value for blocking unless it's already being accessed.

Published: 2025-02-26 Last update: 2025-09-22 Assigner: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67 Source: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67

Conclusion & alert: CVE-2022-49272 is rated Low Risk (23.4/100): CVSS Medium severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.02%). 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-2022-49272

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 2025-09-23 0.05% 0.02% -0.03%
2 2025-05-05 0.04% 0.05% +0.01%
3 2025-02-27 0.04%

Full EPSS history (3 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2022-49272

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-2022-49272

OS Trackers for CVE-2022-49272

vendor priority summary link
debian not yet assigned CVE-2022-49272 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-2022-49272
redhat medium https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2022-49272
suse medium https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2022-49272/
ubuntu medium CVE-2022-49272 medium priority: Ubuntu including 128 source packages (linux, linux-allwinner-5.19, …), 1024 status rows across 8 suites (bionic, focal, jammy, noble, oracular, trusty, upstream, xenial): DNE 702, ignored 146, not-affected 114, released 62. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2022-49272

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2022-49272

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
linux linux_kernel 5.10.109 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:5.10.109:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 5.15.32 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:5.15.32:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 5.16.18 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:5.16.18:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 5.17.1 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:5.17.1:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2022-49272

cvelogic Threat Intelligence