CVE-2022-50257: In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: xen/gntdev: Prevent leaking grants Prior to this commit, if a grant mapping oper...

Description

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 map_ops array would be invalid, whereas all of the entries in the kmap_ops array would be valid. This in turn would cause the following logic in gntdev_map_grant_pages to become invalid: for (i = 0; i < map->count; i++) { if (map->map_ops[i].status == GNTST_okay) { map->unmap_ops[i].handle = map->map_ops[i].handle; if (!use_ptemod) alloced++; } if (use_ptemod) { if (map->kmap_ops[i].status == GNTST_okay) { if (map->map_ops[i].status == GNTST_okay) alloced++; map->kunmap_ops[i].handle = map->kmap_ops[i].handle; } } } ... atomic_add(alloced, &map->live_grants); Assume that use_ptemod 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 kmap_ops[i].status and map_ops[i].status are set to GNTST_okay (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->live_grants to be incorrectly set. In some cases, all of the map_ops mappings fail, but all of the kmap_ops mappings succeed, meaning that live_grants may remain zero. This in turn makes it impossible to unmap the successfully grant-mapped pages pointed to by kmap_ops, because unmap_grant_pages has the following snippet of code at its beginning: if (atomic_read(&map->live_grants) == 0) return; /* Nothing to do */ In other cases where only some of the map_ops mappings fail but all kmap_ops mappings succeed, live_grants is made positive, but when the user requests unmapping the grant-mapped pages, __unmap_grant_pages_done will then make map->live_grants 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->live_grants) from map->live_grants. The side effects of a negative live_grants 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 map_ops and kmap_ops mappings separately, and then adding the sum to live_grants. During unmapping, only the number of successfully unmapped grants is subtracted from live_grants. The code is also modified to check for negative live_grants values after the subtraction and warn the user.

Metrics

CVSS 3.1

5.5/10

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

EPSS Probability

0.15%

4.5th percentile

Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days. Learn more

Affected Software

Vendor	Product	Versions
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

References

Timeline

Published: Sep 15, 2025
Last Modified: Jun 17, 2026
Status: Analyzed

Frequently Asked Questions

What is CVE-2022-50257?

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 map_ops array would be invalid, whereas all of the entries in the kmap_ops array would be valid. This in turn would cause the following logic in gntdev_map_grant_pages to become invalid: for (i = 0; i < map->count; i++) { if (map->map_ops[i].status == GNTST_okay) { map->unmap_ops[i].handle = map->map_ops[i].handle; if (!use_ptemod) alloced++; } if (use_ptemod) { if (map->kmap_ops[i].status == GNTST_okay) { if (map->map_ops[i].status == GNTST_okay) alloced++; map->kunmap_ops[i].handle = map->kmap_ops[i].handle; } } } ... atomic_add(alloced, &map->live_grants); Assume that use_ptemod 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 kmap_ops[i].status and map_ops[i].status are set to GNTST_okay (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->live_grants to be incorrectly set. In some cases, all of the map_ops mappings fail, but all of the kmap_ops mappings succeed, meaning that live_grants may remain zero. This in turn makes it impossible to unmap the successfully grant-mapped pages pointed to by kmap_ops, because unmap_grant_pages has the following snippet of code at its beginning: if (atomic_read(&map->live_grants) == 0) return; /* Nothing to do */ In other cases where only some of the map_ops mappings fail but all kmap_ops mappings succeed, live_grants is made positive, but when the user requests unmapping the grant-mapped pages, __unmap_grant_pages_done will then make map->live_grants 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->live_grants) from map->live_grants. The side effects of a negative live_grants 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 map_ops and kmap_ops mappings separately, and then adding the sum to live_grants. During unmapping, only the number of successfully unmapped grants is subtracted from live_grants. The code is also modified to check for negative live_grants values after the subtraction and warn the user.

How severe is CVE-2022-50257?

CVE-2022-50257 has a CVSS score of 5.5/10 (MEDIUM severity). The EPSS model estimates a 0.15% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days.

How do I fix CVE-2022-50257?

Check the vendor references and advisories linked above for patched versions and mitigation guidance. You can also run a Strix scan to test if your systems are affected.