CVE-2022-49394 | blk-iolatency: Fix inflight count imbalances and IO hangs on offline

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: blk-iolatency: Fix inflight count imbalances and IO hangs on offline iolatency needs to track the number of inflight IOs per cgroup. As this tracking can be expensive, it is disabled when no cgroup has iolatency configured for the device. To ensure that the inflight counters stay balanced, iolatency_set_limit() freezes the request_queue while manipulating the enabled counter, which ensures that no IO is in flight and thus all counters are zero. Unfortunately, iolatency_set_limit() isn't the only place where the enabled counter is manipulated. iolatency_pd_offline() can also dec the counter and trigger disabling. As this disabling happens without freezing the q, this can easily happen while some IOs are in flight and thus leak the counts. This can be easily demonstrated by turning on iolatency on an one empty cgroup while IOs are in flight in other cgroups and then removing the cgroup. Note that iolatency shouldn't have been enabled elsewhere in the system to ensure that removing the cgroup disables iolatency for the whole device. The following keeps flipping on and off iolatency on sda: echo +io > /sys/fs/cgroup/cgroup.subtree_control while true; do mkdir -p /sys/fs/cgroup/test echo '8:0 target=100000' > /sys/fs/cgroup/test/io.latency sleep 1 rmdir /sys/fs/cgroup/test sleep 1 done and there's concurrent fio generating direct rand reads: fio --name test --filename=/dev/sda --direct=1 --rw=randread \ --runtime=600 --time_based --iodepth=256 --numjobs=4 --bs=4k while monitoring with the following drgn script: while True: for css in css_for_each_descendant_pre(prog['blkcg_root'].css.address_of_()): for pos in hlist_for_each(container_of(css, 'struct blkcg', 'css').blkg_list): blkg = container_of(pos, 'struct blkcg_gq', 'blkcg_node') pd = blkg.pd[prog['blkcg_policy_iolatency'].plid] if pd.value_() == 0: continue iolat = container_of(pd, 'struct iolatency_grp', 'pd') inflight = iolat.rq_wait.inflight.counter.value_() if inflight: print(f'inflight={inflight} {disk_name(blkg.q.disk).decode("utf-8")} ' f'{cgroup_path(css.cgroup).decode("utf-8")}') time.sleep(1) The monitoring output looks like the following: inflight=1 sda /user.slice inflight=1 sda /user.slice ... inflight=14 sda /user.slice inflight=13 sda /user.slice inflight=17 sda /user.slice inflight=15 sda /user.slice inflight=18 sda /user.slice inflight=17 sda /user.slice inflight=20 sda /user.slice inflight=19 sda /user.slice <- fio stopped, inflight stuck at 19 inflight=19 sda /user.slice inflight=19 sda /user.slice If a cgroup with stuck inflight ends up getting throttled, the throttled IOs will never get issued as there's no completion event to wake it up leading to an indefinite hang. This patch fixes the bug by unifying enable handling into a work item which is automatically kicked off from iolatency_set_min_lat_nsec() which is called from both iolatency_set_limit() and iolatency_pd_offline() paths. Punting to a work item is necessary as iolatency_pd_offline() is called under spinlocks while freezing a request_queue requires a sleepable context. This also simplifies the code reducing LOC sans the comments and avoids the unnecessary freezes which were happening whenever a cgroup's latency target is newly set or cleared.

Published: 2025-02-26 Last update: 2025-10-21 Assigner: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67 Source: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67

Conclusion & alert: CVE-2022-49394 is rated Low Risk (27.7/100): CVSS Medium severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.25%). 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-2022-49394

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 2026-06-15 0.05% 0.25% +0.20%
2 2026-05-05 0.05% 0.05% -0.00%
3 2026-04-06 0.05%

Full EPSS history (8 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2022-49394

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-2022-49394

OS Trackers for CVE-2022-49394

vendor priority summary link
debian not yet assigned CVE-2022-49394 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-2022-49394
redhat medium https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2022-49394
suse medium https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2022-49394/
ubuntu medium CVE-2022-49394 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 146, released 135, not-affected 125. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2022-49394

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2022-49394

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
linux linux_kernel >= 4.19.29, < 4.19.247 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 4.20.16, < 5.0 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 5.0.1, < 5.4.198 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 5.5, < 5.10.121 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 5.11, < 5.15.46 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 5.16, < 5.17.14 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 5.18, < 5.18.3 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 5.0 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:5.0:-:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 5.0 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:5.0:rc6:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 5.0 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:5.0:rc7:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 5.0 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:5.0:rc8:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2022-49394

cvelogic Threat Intelligence