CVE-2022-49733: ALSA: pcm: oss: Fix race at SNDCTL_DSP_SYNC

Severity: medium (CVSS 4.7 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: 2025-03-02 · updated 2026-08-04
Weakness: CWE-362

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ALSA: pcm: oss: Fix race at SNDCTL_DSP_SYNC There is a small race window at snd_pcm_oss_sync() that is called from OSS PCM SNDCTL_DSP_SYNC ioctl; namely the function calls snd_pcm_oss_make_ready() at first, then takes the params_lock mutex for the rest. When the stream is set up again by another thread between them, it leads to inconsistency, and may result in unexpected results such as NULL dereference of OSS buffer as a fuzzer spotted recently. The fix is simply to cover snd_pcm_oss_make_ready() call into the same params_lock mutex with snd_pcm_oss_make_ready_locked() variant.

Affected products

Linux kernel: before 5.4.215; from 5.5 before 5.10.148; from 5.11 before 5.15.68; from 5.16 before 5.19.9; 6.0-rc1, 6.0-rc2, 6.0-rc3, 6.0-rc4 — fixed in 5.10.148, 5.15.68, 5.19.9, 5.4.215

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 5.10.148, 5.15.68, 5.19.9, 5.4.215. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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