CVE-2022-50257

xen/gntdev: Prevent leaking grants

MEDIUM
5.5
CVSS Score
Published: September 15, 2025 at 02:02 PM UTC
Updated: June 17, 2026 at 05:23 AM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorLinux Kernel

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Severity
MEDIUM5.5
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.2%

Description

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.

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

v ≥ 5.18.84.14.287 ≤ v < 4.14.2984.19.251 ≤ v < 4.19.2644.9.322 ≤ v < 4.9.3325.10.129 ≤ v < 5.10.1535.15.51 ≤ v < 5.15.755.18.8 ≤ v < 5.195.19 ≤ v < 5.19.175.19 ≤ v < 6.0.35.19 ≤ v < 6.15.19.1 ≤ v < 5.19.175.4.204 ≤ v < 5.4.2236.0 ≤ v < 6.0.32fe26a9a70482bea7827803fdec98050fec68b2036cd49b071fceca70326d9db786aa15e9fffd6774.14.2874.19.2514.9.3225.10.1295.15.515.18.85.195.19 rc45.19 rc55.19 rc65.19 rc75.19 rc85.4.20473e9e72247b98da65bc32d41a961e820cca5f50379963021fd718b74bed4cbc98f5f49d3ba6fb48c87a54feba68f5e47925c8e49100db9b2a8add761d4a49d20cd7cdb6bd075cd04c2cd00a7eba907eddbe97cff7dd9f0f75c524afdd55ad46be3d15295ee25841221c17228cbd30262a90f3b03ad80cdf6
Vendor states this is fixed in 0991028cd49567d7016d1b224fe0117c35059f86 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in 0bccddd9b8f03ad57bb738f0d3da8845d4e1e579 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in 1cb73704cb4778299609634a790a80daba582f7d (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in 273f6a4f71be12e2ec80a4919837d6e4fa933a04 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in 3d056d81b93a787613eda44aeb21fc14c3392b34 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in 49bb053b1ec367b6883030eb2cca696e91435679 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in 49db6cb81400ba863e1a85e55fcdf1031807c23f (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in b043f2cab100bed3e0a999dcf38cc05b1e4a7e41 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in cb1ccfe7655380f77a58b340072f5f40bc285902 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in 4.14.298 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 4.19.264 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 4.9.332 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 5.10.153 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 5.15.75 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 5.19 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 5.19.17 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 5.4.223 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 6.0.3 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 6.1 (unaffected)

References (9)

Patch
Source: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/0991028cd49567d7016d1b224fe0117c35059f86
Patch
Source: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/0bccddd9b8f03ad57bb738f0d3da8845d4e1e579
Patch
Source: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/1cb73704cb4778299609634a790a80daba582f7d
Patch
Source: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/273f6a4f71be12e2ec80a4919837d6e4fa933a04
Patch
Source: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3d056d81b93a787613eda44aeb21fc14c3392b34
Patch
Source: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/49bb053b1ec367b6883030eb2cca696e91435679
Patch
Source: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/49db6cb81400ba863e1a85e55fcdf1031807c23f
Patch
Source: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/b043f2cab100bed3e0a999dcf38cc05b1e4a7e41

CVSS

Attack Vector
LOCAL
Complexity
LOW
Privileges
LOW
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
NONE
Integrity
NONE
Availability
HIGH
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusANALYZED
CWE
NVD-CWE-noinfo

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