In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ARC: mm: fix leakage of memory allocated for PTE Since commit d9820ff ("ARC: mm: switch pgtable_t back to struct page *") a memory leakage problem occurs. Memory allocated for page table entries not released during process termination. This issue can be reproduced by a small program that allocates a large amount of memory. After several runs, you'll see that the amount of free memory has reduced and will continue to reduce after each run. All ARC CPUs are effected by this issue. The issue was introduced since the kernel stable release v5.15-rc1. As described in commit d9820ff after switch pgtable_t back to struct page *, a pointer to "struct page" and appropriate functions are used to allocate and free a memory page for PTEs, but the pmd_pgtable macro hasn't changed and returns the direct virtual address from the PMD (PGD) entry. Than this address used as a parameter in the __pte_free() and as a result this function couldn't release memory page allocated for PTEs. Fix this issue by changing the pmd_pgtable macro and returning pointer to struct page.
Conclusion & alert: CVE-2022-50446 is rated Low Risk (23/100): 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.
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 | 2025-10-01 | — | 0.02% | — |
Full EPSS history (1 record total)
CVSS metrics for this CVE.
| Base score | Version | Severity | Vector | Exploitability | Impact | Score source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5.5 | 3.1 | MEDIUM |
|
1.8 | 3.6 | [email protected] |
| vendor | priority | summary | link |
|---|---|---|---|
debian
|
unimportant | CVE-2022-50446 unimportant 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-2022-50446 |
redhat
|
— | — | https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2022-50446 |
suse
|
medium | CVE-2022-50446 severity moderate: SUSE including 26 source package names (cluster-md-kmp-default, dlm-kmp-default, …), 276 product×package rows across 54 product lines (SLES-LTSS-TERADATA 15 SP2, SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 15 SP7, … (54 product lines)): Known Not Affected 276. | https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2022-50446/ |
ubuntu
|
medium | CVE-2022-50446 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, not-affected 128, released 110, needs-triage 1. | https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2022-50446 |
| Vendor | Product | Version | Raw CPE |
|---|---|---|---|
| linux | linux_kernel | >= 5.15, < 5.15.77 | cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| linux | linux_kernel | >= 5.16, < 6.0.7 | cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| linux | linux_kernel | 6.1 | cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.1:rc1:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| linux | linux_kernel | 6.1 | cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.1:rc2:*:*:*:*:*:* |