CVE-2022-48862: vhost: fix hung thread due to erroneous iotlb entries

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2024-07-16 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-835

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: vhost: fix hung thread due to erroneous iotlb entries In vhost_iotlb_add_range_ctx(), range size can overflow to 0 when start is 0 and last is ULONG_MAX. One instance where it can happen is when userspace sends an IOTLB message with iova=size=uaddr=0 (vhost_process_iotlb_msg). So, an entry with size = 0, start = 0, last = ULONG_MAX ends up in the iotlb. Next time a packet is sent, iotlb_access_ok() loops indefinitely due to that erroneous entry. Call Trace: <TASK> iotlb_access_ok+0x21b/0x3e0 drivers/vhost/vhost.c:1340 vq_meta_prefetch+0xbc/0x280 drivers/vhost/vhost.c:1366 vhost_transport_do_send_pkt+0xe0/0xfd0 drivers/vhost/vsock.c:104 vhost_worker+0x23d/0x3d0 drivers/vhost/vhost.c:372 kthread+0x2e9/0x3a0 kernel/kthread.c:377 ret_from_fork+0x1f/0x30 arch/x86/entry/entry_64.S:295 </TASK> Reported by syzbot at: https://syzkaller.appspot.com/bug?extid=0abd373e2e50d704db87 To fix this, do two things: 1. Return -EINVAL in vhost_chr_write_iter() when userspace asks to map a range with size 0. 2. Fix vhost_iotlb_add_range_ctx() to handle the range [0, ULONG_MAX] by splitting it into two entries.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 5.7 before 5.15.29; from 5.16 before 5.16.15 — fixed in 5.15.29, 5.16.15

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 5.15.29, 5.16.15. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

Get alerted when CVE-2022-48862 or the next vulnerability affects your stack