CVE-2022-49808: net: dsa: don't leak tagger-owned storage on switch driver unbind

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: 2025-05-01 · updated 2026-06-17

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: dsa: don't leak tagger-owned storage on switch driver unbind In the initial commit dc452a471dba ("net: dsa: introduce tagger-owned storage for private and shared data"), we had a call to tag_ops->disconnect(dst) issued from dsa_tree_free(), which is called at tree teardown time. There were problems with connecting to a switch tree as a whole, so this got reworked to connecting to individual switches within the tree. In this process, tag_ops->disconnect(ds) was made to be called only from switch.c (cross-chip notifiers emitted as a result of dynamic tag proto changes), but the normal driver teardown code path wasn't replaced with anything. Solve this problem by adding a function that does the opposite of dsa_switch_setup_tag_protocol(), which is called from the equivalent spot in dsa_switch_teardown(). The positioning here also ensures that we won't have any use-after-free in tagging protocol (*rcv) ops, since the teardown sequence is as follows: dsa_tree_teardown -> dsa_tree_teardown_master -> dsa_master_teardown -> unsets master->dsa_ptr, making no further packets match the ETH_P_XDSA packet type handler -> dsa_tree_teardown_ports -> dsa_port_teardown -> dsa_slave_destroy -> unregisters DSA net devices, there is even a synchronize_net() in unregister_netdevice_many() -> dsa_tree_teardown_switches -> dsa_switch_teardown -> dsa_switch_teardown_tag_protocol -> finally frees the tagger-owned storage

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 5.17 before 6.0.10; 6.1-rc1, 6.1-rc2, 6.1-rc3, 6.1-rc4, 6.1-rc5 — fixed in 6.0.10

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.0.10. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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