Linux Kernel up to 5.16.4 USB usb_kill_urb buffer overflow

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability was found in Linux Kernel up to 5.16.4 and classified as critical. This issue affects the function usb_kill_urb of the component USB Handler. The manipulation results in buffer overflow. This vulnerability is identified as CVE-2022-48760. There is not any exploit available. It is suggested to upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in Linux Kernel up to 5.16.4. It has been classified as critical. Affected is the function usb_kill_urb of the component USB Handler. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a buffer overflow vulnerability. CWE is classifying the issue as CWE-120. The product copies an input buffer to an output buffer without verifying that the size of the input buffer is less than the size of the output buffer, leading to a buffer overflow. This is going to have an impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability. CVE summarizes:

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: USB: core: Fix hang in usb_kill_urb by adding memory barriers The syzbot fuzzer has identified a bug in which processes hang waiting for usb_kill_urb() to return. It turns out the issue is not unlinking the URB; that works just fine. Rather, the problem arises when the wakeup notification that the URB has completed is not received. The reason is memory-access ordering on SMP systems. In outline form, usb_kill_urb() and __usb_hcd_giveback_urb() operating concurrently on different CPUs perform the following actions: CPU 0 CPU 1 ---------------------------- --------------------------------- usb_kill_urb(): __usb_hcd_giveback_urb(): ... ... atomic_inc(&urb->reject); atomic_dec(&urb->use_count); ... ... wait_event(usb_kill_urb_queue, atomic_read(&urb->use_count) == 0); if (atomic_read(&urb->reject)) wake_up(&usb_kill_urb_queue); Confining your attention to urb->reject and urb->use_count, you can see that the overall pattern of accesses on CPU 0 is: write urb->reject, then read urb->use_count; whereas the overall pattern of accesses on CPU 1 is: write urb->use_count, then read urb->reject. This pattern is referred to in memory-model circles as SB (for "Store Buffering"), and it is well known that without suitable enforcement of the desired order of accesses -- in the form of memory barriers -- it is entirely possible for one or both CPUs to execute their reads ahead of their writes. The end result will be that sometimes CPU 0 sees the old un-decremented value of urb->use_count while CPU 1 sees the old un-incremented value of urb->reject. Consequently CPU 0 ends up on the wait queue and never gets woken up, leading to the observed hang in usb_kill_urb(). The same pattern of accesses occurs in usb_poison_urb() and the failure pathway of usb_hcd_submit_urb(). The problem is fixed by adding suitable memory barriers. To provide proper memory-access ordering in the SB pattern, a full barrier is required on both CPUs. The atomic_inc() and atomic_dec() accesses themselves don't provide any memory ordering, but since they are present, we can use the optimized smp_mb__after_atomic() memory barrier in the various routines to obtain the desired effect. This patch adds the necessary memory barriers.

The advisory is shared for download at git.kernel.org. This vulnerability is traded as CVE-2022-48760. The exploitability is told to be easy. There are known technical details, but no exploit is available. The current price for an exploit might be approx. USD $0-$5k (estimation calculated on 09/17/2025).

The vulnerability scanner Nessus provides a plugin with the ID 207773 (Oracle Linux 8 : kernel (ELSA-2024-7000)), which helps to determine the existence of the flaw in a target environment.

Upgrading to version 4.4.302, 4.9.300, 4.14.265, 4.19.228, 5.4.176, 5.10.96, 5.15.19 or 5.16.5 eliminates this vulnerability. Applying the patch 5f138ef224df/b50f5ca60475/546ba238535d/5904dfd3ddaf/9c61fce322ac/e3b131e30e61/9340226388c6/c9a18f7c5b07/26fbe9772b8c is able to eliminate this problem. The bugfix is ready for download at git.kernel.org. The best possible mitigation is suggested to be upgrading to the latest version.

The vulnerability is also documented in the vulnerability database at Tenable (207773). Once again VulDB remains the best source for vulnerability data.

Productinfo

Type

• Operating System

Vendor

• Linux

Name

• Kernel

Version

• 4.4.301
• 4.9.299
• 4.14.264
• 4.19.227
• 5.4.175
• 5.10.0
• 5.10.1
• 5.10.2
• 5.10.3
• 5.10.4
• 5.10.5
• 5.10.6
• 5.10.7
• 5.10.8
• 5.10.9
• 5.10.10
• 5.10.11
• 5.10.12
• 5.10.13
• 5.10.14
• 5.10.15
• 5.10.16
• 5.10.17
• 5.10.18
• 5.10.19
• 5.10.20
• 5.10.21
• 5.10.22
• 5.10.23
• 5.10.24
• 5.10.25
• 5.10.26
• 5.10.27
• 5.10.28
• 5.10.29
• 5.10.30
• 5.10.31
• 5.10.32
• 5.10.33
• 5.10.34
• 5.10.35
• 5.10.36
• 5.10.37
• 5.10.38
• 5.10.39
• 5.10.40
• 5.10.41
• 5.10.42
• 5.10.43
• 5.10.44
• 5.10.45
• 5.10.46
• 5.10.47
• 5.10.48
• 5.10.49
• 5.10.50
• 5.10.51
• 5.10.52
• 5.10.53
• 5.10.54
• 5.10.55
• 5.10.56
• 5.10.57
• 5.10.58
• 5.10.59
• 5.10.60
• 5.10.61
• 5.10.62
• 5.10.63
• 5.10.64
• 5.10.65
• 5.10.66
• 5.10.67
• 5.10.68
• 5.10.69
• 5.10.70
• 5.10.71
• 5.10.72
• 5.10.73
• 5.10.74
• 5.10.75
• 5.10.76
• 5.10.77
• 5.10.78
• 5.10.79
• 5.10.80
• 5.10.81
• 5.10.82
• 5.10.83
• 5.10.84
• 5.10.85
• 5.10.86
• 5.10.87
• 5.10.88
• 5.10.89
• 5.10.90
• 5.10.91
• 5.10.92
• 5.10.93
• 5.10.94
• 5.10.95
• 5.15.0
• 5.15.1
• 5.15.2
• 5.15.3
• 5.15.4
• 5.15.5
• 5.15.6
• 5.15.7
• 5.15.8
• 5.15.9
• 5.15.10
• 5.15.11
• 5.15.12
• 5.15.13
• 5.15.14
• 5.15.15
• 5.15.16
• 5.15.17
• 5.15.18
• 5.16.0
• 5.16.1
• 5.16.2
• 5.16.3
• 5.16.4

License

• open-source

Website

• Vendor: https://www.kernel.org/

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Entryinfo

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