CVE-2022-50257: xen/gntdev: Prevent leaking grants

Published Sep 15, 2025
·
Updated

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

xen/gntdev: Prevent leaking grants

Prior to this commit, if a grant mapping operation failed partially, some of the entries in the mapops array would be invalid, whereas all of the entries in the kmapops array would be valid. This in turn would cause the following logic in gntdevmapgrantpages to become invalid:

for (i = 0; i < map->count; i++) { if (map->mapops[i].status == GNTSTokay) { map->unmapops[i].handle = map->mapops[i].handle; if (!useptemod) alloced++; } if (useptemod) { if (map->kmapops[i].status == GNTSTokay) { if (map->mapops[i].status == GNTSTokay) alloced++; map->kunmapops[i].handle = map->kmapops[i].handle; } } } ... atomicadd(alloced, &map->livegrants);

Assume that useptemod is true (i.e., the domain mapping the granted pages is a paravirtualized domain). In the code excerpt above, note that the "alloced" variable is only incremented when both kmapops[i].status and mapops[i].status are set to GNTSTokay (i.e., both mapping operations are successful). However, as also noted above, there are cases where a grant mapping operation fails partially, breaking the assumption of the code excerpt above.

The aforementioned causes map->livegrants to be incorrectly set. In some cases, all of the mapops mappings fail, but all of the kmapops mappings succeed, meaning that livegrants may remain zero. This in turn makes it impossible to unmap the successfully grant-mapped pages pointed to by kmapops, because unmapgrantpages has the following snippet of code at its beginning:

if (atomicread(&map->livegrants) == 0) return; / Nothing to do /

In other cases where only some of the mapops mappings fail but all kmapops mappings succeed, livegrants is made positive, but when the user requests unmapping the grant-mapped pages, unmapgrantpagesdone will then make map->livegrants negative, because the latter function does not check if all of the pages that were requested to be unmapped were actually unmapped, and the same function unconditionally subtracts "data->count" (i.e., a value that can be greater than map->livegrants) from map->livegrants. The side effects of a negative livegrants value have not been studied.

The net effect of all of this is that grant references are leaked in one of the above conditions. In Qubes OS v4.1 (which uses Xen's grant mechanism extensively for X11 GUI isolation), this issue manifests itself with warning messages like the following to be printed out by the Linux kernel in the VM that had granted pages (that contain X11 GUI window data) to dom0: "g.e. 0x1234 still pending", especially after the user rapidly resizes GUI VM windows (causing some grant-mapping operations to partially or completely fail, due to the fact that the VM unshares some of the pages as part of the window resizing, making the pages impossible to grant-map from dom0).

The fix for this issue involves counting all successful mapops and kmapops mappings separately, and then adding the sum to livegrants. During unmapping, only the number of successfully unmapped grants is subtracted from livegrants. The code is also modified to check for negative livegrants values after the subtraction and warn the user.

Affected Software

16 affected components
Linux Linux kernel<=prior to the commit
Linux Linux kernel>=4.9.322<4.9.332
Linux Linux kernel>=4.14.287<4.14.298
Linux Linux kernel>=4.19.251<4.19.264
Linux Linux kernel>=5.4.204<5.4.223
Linux Linux kernel>=5.10.129<5.10.153
Linux Linux kernel>=5.15.51<5.15.75
Linux Linux kernel>=5.18.8<5.19
Linux Linux kernel>=5.19.1<5.19.17
Linux Linux kernel>=6.0<6.0.3
Linux Linux kernel=5.19
Linux Linux kernel=5.19-rc4
Linux Linux kernel=5.19-rc5
Linux Linux kernel=5.19-rc6
Linux Linux kernel=5.19-rc7
Linux Linux kernel=5.19-rc8

Event History

Sep 15, 2025
CVE Published
via MITRE·02:02 PM
Data Sourced
via MITRE·02:02 PM
Description
Data Sourced
via NVD·02:15 PM
RemedyDescriptionSeverityAffected Software

Frequently Asked Questions

1

What is the severity of CVE-2022-50257?

CVE-2022-50257 is considered a medium severity vulnerability in the Linux kernel.

2

How do I fix CVE-2022-50257?

To fix CVE-2022-50257, ensure you update your Linux kernel to the latest stable version where the vulnerability has been patched.

3

What systems are affected by CVE-2022-50257?

CVE-2022-50257 affects various versions of the Linux kernel prior to the resolution of the vulnerability.

4

What type of vulnerability is CVE-2022-50257?

CVE-2022-50257 is a grant mapping vulnerability in the Xen implementation for the Linux kernel.

5

What happens if CVE-2022-50257 is exploited?

Exploiting CVE-2022-50257 may lead to the leakage of sensitive grant entries, potentially impacting system security.

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