CVE-2022-49731

A flaw was found in the libata module in the Linux kernel. A NULL pointer dereference can be triggered in the unlikely case that the PPI, an array of ATA port_info, argument of the ata_host_alloc_pinfo function is NULL. This issue causes a crash and results in a denial of service.

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ata: libata-core: fix NULL pointer deref in ata_host_alloc_pinfo() In an unlikely (and probably wrong?) case that the 'ppi' parameter of ata_host_alloc_pinfo() points to an array starting with a NULL pointer, there's going to be a kernel oops as the 'pi' local variable won't get reassigned from the initial value of NULL. Initialize 'pi' instead to '&ata_dummy_port_info' to fix the possible kernel oops for good... Found by Linux Verification Center (linuxtesting.org) with the SVACE static analysis tool.