CVE-2022-49272

MEDIUM

Linux Kernel Deadlock via ALSA PCM Buffer Mutex and mmap_lock

Title source: llm
STIX 2.1

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ALSA: pcm: Fix potential AB/BA lock with buffer_mutex and mmap_lock syzbot caught a potential deadlock between the PCM runtime->buffer_mutex and the mm->mmap_lock. It was brought by the recent fix to cover the racy read/write and other ioctls, and in that commit, I overlooked a (hopefully only) corner case that may take the revert lock, namely, the OSS mmap. The OSS mmap operation exceptionally allows to re-configure the parameters inside the OSS mmap syscall, where mm->mmap_mutex is already held. Meanwhile, the copy_from/to_user calls at read/write operations also take the mm->mmap_lock internally, hence it may lead to a AB/BA deadlock. A similar problem was already seen in the past and we fixed it with a refcount (in commit b248371628aa). The former fix covered only the call paths with OSS read/write and OSS ioctls, while we need to cover the concurrent access via both ALSA and OSS APIs now. This patch addresses the problem above by replacing the buffer_mutex lock in the read/write operations with a refcount similar as we've used for OSS. The new field, runtime->buffer_accessing, keeps the number of concurrent read/write operations. Unlike the former buffer_mutex protection, this protects only around the copy_from/to_user() calls; the other codes are basically protected by the PCM stream lock. The refcount can be a negative, meaning blocked by the ioctls. If a negative value is seen, the read/write aborts with -EBUSY. In the ioctl side, OTOH, they check this refcount, too, and set to a negative value for blocking unless it's already being accessed.

Scores

CVSS v3 5.5
EPSS 0.0019
EPSS Percentile 8.6%
Attack Vector LOCAL
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Details

CWE
CWE-667
Status published
Products (20)
linux/Kernel 5.10.109 - 5.10.110linux
linux/Kernel 5.15.32 - 5.15.33linux
linux/Kernel 5.16.18 - 5.16.19linux
linux/Kernel 5.17.1 - 5.17.2linux
Linux/Linux 08d1807f097a63ea00a7067dad89c1c81cb2115e - 9661bf674d6a82b76e4ae424438a8ce1e3ed855d
Linux/Linux 47711ff10c7e126702cfa725f6d86ef529d15a5f - 7777744e92a0b30e3e0cce2758d911837011ebd9
Linux/Linux 4d1b0ace2d56dc27cc4921eda7fae57f77f03eb5 - abedf0d08c79d76da0d6fa0d5dbbc98871dcbc2e
Linux/Linux 5.10.109 - 5.10.110
Linux/Linux 5.15.32 - 5.15.33
Linux/Linux 5.16.18 - 5.16.19
... and 10 more
Published Feb 26, 2025
Tracked Since Feb 18, 2026