CVE-2022-49568

KVM: Don't null dereference ops->destroy

Medium · published February 26, 2025

CVSS v3.1
5.5
EPSS
0%
Percentile
21.3
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

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

KVM: Don't null dereference ops->destroy

A KVM device cleanup happens in either of two callbacks:

1) destroy() which is called when the VM is being destroyed;

2) release() which is called when a device fd is closed.

Most KVM devices use 1) but Book3s's interrupt controller KVM devices

(XICS, XIVE, XIVE-native) use 2) as they need to close and reopen during

the machine execution. The error handling in kvm_ioctl_create_device()

assumes destroy() is always defined which leads to NULL dereference as

discovered by Syzkaller.

This adds a checks for destroy!=NULL and adds a missing release().

This is not changing kvm_destroy_devices() as devices with defined

release() should have been removed from the KVM devices list by then.

The record
Technical detail
CVSS v3.1
5.5 · MEDIUM
Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CVSS v4.0
Not supplied
EPSS
0.00297 · 21.3th percentile
Published
2025-02-26T02:23Z
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 26 FEB 02:23Z
    KVM: Don't null dereference ops->destroy
    cvelistv5