CVE-2022-50257 | xen/gntdev: Prevent leaking grants

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: xen/gntdev: Prevent leaking grants Prior to this commit, if a grant mapping operation failed partially, some of the entries in the map_ops array would be invalid, whereas all of the entries in the kmap_ops array would be valid. This in turn would cause the following logic in gntdev_map_grant_pages to become invalid: for (i = 0; i < map->count; i++) { if (map->map_ops[i].status == GNTST_okay) { map->unmap_ops[i].handle = map->map_ops[i].handle; if (!use_ptemod) alloced++; } if (use_ptemod) { if (map->kmap_ops[i].status == GNTST_okay) { if (map->map_ops[i].status == GNTST_okay) alloced++; map->kunmap_ops[i].handle = map->kmap_ops[i].handle; } } } ... atomic_add(alloced, &map->live_grants); Assume that use_ptemod is true (i.e., the domain mapping the granted pages is a paravirtualized domain). In the code excerpt above, note that the "alloced" variable is only incremented when both kmap_ops[i].status and map_ops[i].status are set to GNTST_okay (i.e., both mapping operations are successful). However, as also noted above, there are cases where a grant mapping operation fails partially, breaking the assumption of the code excerpt above. The aforementioned causes map->live_grants to be incorrectly set. In some cases, all of the map_ops mappings fail, but all of the kmap_ops mappings succeed, meaning that live_grants may remain zero. This in turn makes it impossible to unmap the successfully grant-mapped pages pointed to by kmap_ops, because unmap_grant_pages has the following snippet of code at its beginning: if (atomic_read(&map->live_grants) == 0) return; /* Nothing to do */ In other cases where only some of the map_ops mappings fail but all kmap_ops mappings succeed, live_grants is made positive, but when the user requests unmapping the grant-mapped pages, __unmap_grant_pages_done will then make map->live_grants negative, because the latter function does not check if all of the pages that were requested to be unmapped were actually unmapped, and the same function unconditionally subtracts "data->count" (i.e., a value that can be greater than map->live_grants) from map->live_grants. The side effects of a negative live_grants value have not been studied. The net effect of all of this is that grant references are leaked in one of the above conditions. In Qubes OS v4.1 (which uses Xen's grant mechanism extensively for X11 GUI isolation), this issue manifests itself with warning messages like the following to be printed out by the Linux kernel in the VM that had granted pages (that contain X11 GUI window data) to dom0: "g.e. 0x1234 still pending", especially after the user rapidly resizes GUI VM windows (causing some grant-mapping operations to partially or completely fail, due to the fact that the VM unshares some of the pages as part of the window resizing, making the pages impossible to grant-map from dom0). The fix for this issue involves counting all successful map_ops and kmap_ops mappings separately, and then adding the sum to live_grants. During unmapping, only the number of successfully unmapped grants is subtracted from live_grants. The code is also modified to check for negative live_grants values after the subtraction and warn the user.

Published: 2025-09-15 Last update: 2025-11-25 Assigner: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67 Source: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67

Conclusion & alert: CVE-2022-50257 is rated Low Risk (24.8/100): 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-2022-50257

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 2025-09-16 0.03%

Full EPSS history (1 record total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2022-50257

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-2022-50257

OS Trackers for CVE-2022-50257

vendor priority summary link
debian not yet assigned CVE-2022-50257 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-2022-50257
redhat https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2022-50257
suse medium https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2022-50257/
ubuntu medium CVE-2022-50257 medium priority: Ubuntu including 158 source packages (linux, linux-allwinner-5.19, …), 1414 status rows across 9 suites (bionic, focal, jammy, noble, plucky, questing, trusty, upstream, xenial): DNE 1017, ignored 158, released 148, not-affected 90, needs-triage 1. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2022-50257

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2022-50257

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
linux linux_kernel >= 4.9.322, < 4.9.332 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 4.14.287, < 4.14.298 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 4.19.251, < 4.19.264 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 5.4.204, < 5.4.223 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 5.10.129, < 5.10.153 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 5.15.51, < 5.15.75 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 5.18.8, < 5.19 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 5.19.1, < 5.19.17 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 6.0, < 6.0.3 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 5.19 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:5.19:-:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 5.19 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:5.19:rc4:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 5.19 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:5.19:rc5:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 5.19 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:5.19:rc6:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 5.19 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:5.19:rc7:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 5.19 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:5.19:rc8:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2022-50257

cvelogic Threat Intelligence