CVE-2022-23645: Out-of-bounds read in swtpm

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2022-02-18 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-125

Description

swtpm is a libtpms-based TPM emulator with socket, character device, and Linux CUSE interface. Versions prior to 0.5.3, 0.6.2, and 0.7.1 are vulnerable to out-of-bounds read. A specially crafted header of swtpm's state, where the blobheader's hdrsize indicator has an invalid value, may cause an out-of-bounds access when the byte array representing the state of the TPM is accessed. This will likely crash swtpm or prevent it from starting since the state cannot be understood. Users should upgrade to swtpm v0.5.3, v0.6.2, or v0.7.1 to receive a patch. There are currently no known workarounds.

Affected products

Fedoraproject Fedora: 35
Red Hat Enterprise Linux: 8.0
Swtpm Project Swtpm: before 0.5.3; from 0.6.0 before 0.6.2; 0.7.0, 0.7.0-rc1, 0.7.0-rc2 — fixed in 0.5.3, 0.6.2

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Swtpm Project Swtpm 0.5.3, 0.6.2. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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