CVE-2022-50675
arm64: mte: Avoid setting PG_mte_tagged if no tags cleared or restored
Severity Score
Exploit Likelihood
Affected Versions
Public Exploits
0Exploited in Wild
-Decision
Descriptions
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: arm64: mte: Avoid setting PG_mte_tagged if no tags cleared or restored Prior to commit 69e3b846d8a7 ("arm64: mte: Sync tags for pages where PTE
is untagged"), mte_sync_tags() was only called for pte_tagged() entries
(those mapped with PROT_MTE). Therefore mte_sync_tags() could safely use
test_and_set_bit(PG_mte_tagged, &page->flags) without inadvertently
setting PG_mte_tagged on an untagged page. The above commit was required as guests may enable MTE without any
control at the stage 2 mapping, nor a PROT_MTE mapping in the VMM.
However, the side-effect was that any page with a PTE that looked like
swap (or migration) was getting PG_mte_tagged set automatically. A
subsequent page copy (e.g. migration) copied the tags to the destination
page even if the tags were owned by KASAN. This issue was masked by the page_kasan_tag_reset() call introduced in
commit e5b8d9218951 ("arm64: mte: reset the page tag in page->flags").
When this commit was reverted (20794545c146), KASAN started reporting
access faults because the overriding tags in a page did not match the
original page->flags (with CONFIG_KASAN_HW_TAGS=y): BUG: KASAN: invalid-access in copy_page+0x10/0xd0 arch/arm64/lib/copy_page.S:26 Read at addr f5ff000017f2e000 by task syz-executor.1/2218 Pointer tag: [f5], memory tag: [f2] Move the PG_mte_tagged bit setting from mte_sync_tags() to the actual
place where tags are cleared (mte_sync_page_tags()) or restored
(mte_restore_tags()).
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: arm64: mte: Avoid setting PG_mte_tagged if no tags cleared or restored Prior to commit 69e3b846d8a7 ("arm64: mte: Sync tags for pages where PTE is untagged"), mte_sync_tags() was only called for pte_tagged() entries (those mapped with PROT_MTE). Therefore mte_sync_tags() could safely use test_and_set_bit(PG_mte_tagged, &page->flags) without inadvertently setting PG_mte_tagged on an untagged page. The above commit was required as guests may enable MTE without any control at the stage 2 mapping, nor a PROT_MTE mapping in the VMM. However, the side-effect was that any page with a PTE that looked like swap (or migration) was getting PG_mte_tagged set automatically. A subsequent page copy (e.g. migration) copied the tags to the destination page even if the tags were owned by KASAN. This issue was masked by the page_kasan_tag_reset() call introduced in commit e5b8d9218951 ("arm64: mte: reset the page tag in page->flags"). When this commit was reverted (20794545c146), KASAN started reporting access faults because the overriding tags in a page did not match the original page->flags (with CONFIG_KASAN_HW_TAGS=y): BUG: KASAN: invalid-access in copy_page+0x10/0xd0 arch/arm64/lib/copy_page.S:26 Read at addr f5ff000017f2e000 by task syz-executor.1/2218 Pointer tag: [f5], memory tag: [f2] Move the PG_mte_tagged bit setting from mte_sync_tags() to the actual place where tags are cleared (mte_sync_page_tags()) or restored (mte_restore_tags()).
CVSS Scores
SSVC
- Decision:-
Timeline
- 2025-12-09 CVE Reserved
- 2025-12-09 CVE Published
- 2025-12-09 CVE Updated
- 2026-01-10 EPSS Updated
- ---------- Exploited in Wild
- ---------- KEV Due Date
- ---------- First Exploit
CWE
CAPEC
References (4)
| URL | Tag | Source |
|---|---|---|
| https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/69e3b846d8a753f9f279f29531ca56b0f7563ad0 | Vuln. Introduced |
| URL | Date | SRC |
|---|
| URL | Date | SRC |
|---|
Affected Vendors, Products, and Versions
| Vendor | Product | Version | Other | Status | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vendor | Product | Version | Other | Status | <-- --> | Vendor | Product | Version | Other | Status |
| Linux Search vendor "Linux" | Linux Kernel Search vendor "Linux" for product "Linux Kernel" | >= 5.14 < 5.15.82 Search vendor "Linux" for product "Linux Kernel" and version " >= 5.14 < 5.15.82" | en |
Affected
| ||||||
| Linux Search vendor "Linux" | Linux Kernel Search vendor "Linux" for product "Linux Kernel" | >= 5.14 < 6.0.3 Search vendor "Linux" for product "Linux Kernel" and version " >= 5.14 < 6.0.3" | en |
Affected
| ||||||
| Linux Search vendor "Linux" | Linux Kernel Search vendor "Linux" for product "Linux Kernel" | >= 5.14 < 6.1 Search vendor "Linux" for product "Linux Kernel" and version " >= 5.14 < 6.1" | en |
Affected
| ||||||
