Vulnerability in Kernel (CVE-2022-50446)

Summary

Vulnerability in Kernel (CVE-2022-50446). Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure. Mitigation: upgrade to 5.15.77, 6.0.7 or later.

Original description

The description as published by the source.

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

ARC: mm: fix leakage of memory allocated for PTE

Since commit d9820ff ("ARC: mm: switch pgtable_t back to struct page *")
a memory leakage problem occurs. Memory allocated for page table entries
not released during process termination. This issue can be reproduced by
a small program that allocates a large amount of memory. After several
runs, you'll see that the amount of free memory has reduced and will
continue to reduce after each run. All ARC CPUs are effected by this
issue. The issue was introduced since the kernel stable release v5.15-rc1.

As described in commit d9820ff after switch pgtable_t back to struct
page *, a pointer to "struct page" and appropriate functions are used to
allocate and free a memory page for PTEs, but the pmd_pgtable macro hasn't
changed and returns the direct virtual address from the PMD (PGD) entry.
Than this address used as a parameter in the __pte_free() and as a result
this function couldn't release memory page allocated for PTEs.

Fix this issue by changing the pmd_pgtable macro and returning pointer to
struct page.

Source: OSV.dev (Open Source Vulnerabilities) NVD OSV

Auto-generated summary

Assembled by SecPulse from the source data (CVSS, CWE, affected versions) using templates — no AI involved. Check the original description and references below for exact details.

A vulnerability tracked as CVE-2022-50446 has been found in Kernel.
Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure.
What to do: upgrade Kernel to 5.15.77, 6.0.7 or later.
If unsure, ask your IT team or search "Kernel CVE-2022-50446" on the vendor's site.

CVE-2022-50446 (Kernel)
Patched: 5.15.77, 6.0.7 — apply immediately
Plan: 1) Audit SBOM/dependencies, 2) Stage→prod upgrade, 3) Add WAF/proxy monitoring on affected endpoints, 4) Hunt IOCs in logs.
Refs: see the GHSA / vendor advisory / patched release linked on this page.

❓ What is the problem

A vulnerability (unclassified) exists in Kernel.

📍 Affected scope

Check the vendor advisory for the affected versions of Kernel.

🔥 Severity

Severity: ?. Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure.

🔧 How to fix

Update to 5.15.77, 6.0.7.

🛡️ Workaround

Until the patch is applied: disable the affected feature, apply WAF rules, or restrict access via network ACLs.

🔍 Detection

Search webserver/proxy logs for unusual request patterns matching this CVE's known IOCs. Run grep -r 'Kernel' . against your dependency files (package-lock.json, requirements.txt, go.sum) to find affected services.

Response actions

Concrete steps and command examples for SOC/SRE teams to execute in order

1
Identify exposure identify
```
grep -r 'Kernel' . | grep -v node_modules
```
リポジトリと本番環境の依存ファイル (package-lock.json / requirements.txt / go.sum / Gemfile.lock 等) で Kernel を grep し、稼働しているサービス・バージョンを把握する。
2
Apply patch patch
```
Upgrade Kernel to 5.15.77, 6.0.7
```
ステージング環境で 5.15.77, 6.0.7 に上げて回帰テスト → 本番反映。回帰テストはアプリの主要ハッピーパスを含めること。
3
Post-deployment verification verify
```
Confirm patched version is live in production
```
パッチ適用後、ステージングで PoC または同等の悪用パターンを再現して脆弱性が閉じたことを確認。本番ではアクセスログ・WAF でアラート再発が無いか継続監視。

Affected packages

Linux Kernel

[{"type":"ECOSYSTEM","events":[{"introduced":"5.15.0"},{"fixed":"5.15.77"}]},{"type":"ECOSYSTEM","events":[{"introduced":"5.16.0"},{"fixed":"6.0.7"}]}]

Fix status by distribution

Fixed packages published by each distribution for this CVE

Debian DEBIAN-CVE-2022-50446 linux Fixed in: 6.0.7-1
Ubuntu UBUNTU-CVE-2022-50446 linux-hwe-edge