CVE-2022-49111
Published: 26 February 2025
Summary
CVE-2022-49111 is a high-severity Use After Free (CWE-416) vulnerability in Linux Linux Kernel. Its CVSS base score is 7.8 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (T1068); ranked at the 1.4th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 SI-2 (Flaw Remediation) and RA-5 (Vulnerability Monitoring and Scanning).
Deeper analysis
CVE-2022-49111 is a use-after-free vulnerability in the Linux kernel's Bluetooth subsystem, specifically in the hci_send_acl function. The issue arises when processing the HCI_EV_DISCONN_PHY_LINK_COMPLETE event, which calls hci_conn_del without first verifying if the connection type (conn->type) is AMP_LINK; if it is, upper layers are not properly cleaned up via hci_disconn_cfm. This leads to a use-after-free detected by KASAN, as seen in kernel traces from bluetoothd attempting to send ACL data after the connection object is freed. The vulnerability affects the Linux kernel Bluetooth stack, with a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.8 (AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H) and is classified under CWE-416 (Use After Free).
A local attacker with low privileges can exploit this vulnerability by interacting with the Bluetooth stack, such as through bluetoothd sending L2CAP data after a specific disconnection event. The kernel trace shows the use-after-free occurring in hci_send_acl during l2cap_chan_send, triggered by socket writes post-disconnection of an AMP link. Successful exploitation could result in high-impact confidentiality, integrity, and availability violations, potentially allowing kernel memory corruption, denial of service via crash, or arbitrary code execution.
Mitigation involves applying upstream kernel patches from the provided stable commit references, including commits like 2cc803804ec9a296b3156855d6c8c4ca1c6b84be, 3803d896ddd97c7c16689a5381c0960040727647, 4da302b90b96c309987eb9b37c8547f939f042d2, 643a6c26bd32e339d00ad97b8822b6db009e803c, and 684e505406abaeabe0058e9776f9210bf2747953, which fix the connection type check and proper cleanup in the Bluetooth HCI event handling.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2022-55101
Vulnerability details
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: Bluetooth: Fix use after free in hci_send_acl This fixes the following trace caused by receiving HCI_EV_DISCONN_PHY_LINK_COMPLETE which does call hci_conn_del without first checking if conn->type is in fact AMP_LINK and…
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in case it is do properly cleanup upper layers with hci_disconn_cfm: ================================================================== BUG: KASAN: use-after-free in hci_send_acl+0xaba/0xc50 Read of size 8 at addr ffff88800e404818 by task bluetoothd/142 CPU: 0 PID: 142 Comm: bluetoothd Not tainted 5.17.0-rc5-00006-gda4022eeac1a #7 Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS rel-1.14.0-0-g155821a1990b-prebuilt.qemu.org 04/01/2014 Call Trace: <TASK> dump_stack_lvl+0x45/0x59 print_address_description.constprop.0+0x1f/0x150 kasan_report.cold+0x7f/0x11b hci_send_acl+0xaba/0xc50 l2cap_do_send+0x23f/0x3d0 l2cap_chan_send+0xc06/0x2cc0 l2cap_sock_sendmsg+0x201/0x2b0 sock_sendmsg+0xdc/0x110 sock_write_iter+0x20f/0x370 do_iter_readv_writev+0x343/0x690 do_iter_write+0x132/0x640 vfs_writev+0x198/0x570 do_writev+0x202/0x280 do_syscall_64+0x38/0x90 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x44/0xae RSP: 002b:00007ffce8a099b8 EFLAGS: 00000246 ORIG_RAX: 0000000000000014 Code: 0f 00 f7 d8 64 89 02 48 c7 c0 ff ff ff ff eb b8 0f 1f 00 f3 0f 1e fa 64 8b 04 25 18 00 00 00 85 c0 75 10 b8 14 00 00 00 0f 05 <48> 3d 00 f0 ff ff 77 51 c3 48 83 ec 28 89 54 24 1c 48 89 74 24 10 RDX: 0000000000000001 RSI: 00007ffce8a099e0 RDI: 0000000000000015 RAX: ffffffffffffffda RBX: 00007ffce8a099e0 RCX: 00007f788fc3cf77 R10: 00007ffce8af7080 R11: 0000000000000246 R12: 000055e4ccf75580 RBP: 0000000000000015 R08: 0000000000000002 R09: 0000000000000001 </TASK> R13: 000055e4ccf754a0 R14: 000055e4ccf75cd0 R15: 000055e4ccf4a6b0 Allocated by task 45: kasan_save_stack+0x1e/0x40 __kasan_kmalloc+0x81/0xa0 hci_chan_create+0x9a/0x2f0 l2cap_conn_add.part.0+0x1a/0xdc0 l2cap_connect_cfm+0x236/0x1000 le_conn_complete_evt+0x15a7/0x1db0 hci_le_conn_complete_evt+0x226/0x2c0 hci_le_meta_evt+0x247/0x450 hci_event_packet+0x61b/0xe90 hci_rx_work+0x4d5/0xc50 process_one_work+0x8fb/0x15a0 worker_thread+0x576/0x1240 kthread+0x29d/0x340 ret_from_fork+0x1f/0x30 Freed by task 45: kasan_save_stack+0x1e/0x40 kasan_set_track+0x21/0x30 kasan_set_free_info+0x20/0x30 __kasan_slab_free+0xfb/0x130 kfree+0xac/0x350 hci_conn_cleanup+0x101/0x6a0 hci_conn_del+0x27e/0x6c0 hci_disconn_phylink_complete_evt+0xe0/0x120 hci_event_packet+0x812/0xe90 hci_rx_work+0x4d5/0xc50 process_one_work+0x8fb/0x15a0 worker_thread+0x576/0x1240 kthread+0x29d/0x340 ret_from_fork+0x1f/0x30 The buggy address belongs to the object at ffff88800c0f0500 The buggy address is located 24 bytes inside of which belongs to the cache kmalloc-128 of size 128 The buggy address belongs to the page: 128-byte region [ffff88800c0f0500, ffff88800c0f0580) flags: 0x100000000000200(slab|node=0|zone=1) page:00000000fe45cd86 refcount:1 mapcount:0 mapping:0000000000000000 index:0x0 pfn:0xc0f0 raw: 0000000000000000 0000000080100010 00000001ffffffff 0000000000000000 raw: 0100000000000200 ffffea00003a2c80 dead000000000004 ffff8880078418c0 page dumped because: kasan: bad access detected ffff88800c0f0400: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 fc fc fc Memory state around the buggy address: >ffff88800c0f0500: fa fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb ffff88800c0f0480: fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc ffff88800c0f0580: fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc ---truncated---
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Local kernel UAF in Bluetooth HCI enables privilege escalation via arbitrary code execution or memory corruption from low-privileged Bluetooth stack interaction.
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
SI-2 mandates timely flaw remediation, directly addressing the use-after-free in Linux kernel Bluetooth hci_send_acl by applying specific patches like commit 2cc803804ec9.
SI-16 enforces memory protection mechanisms such as KASLR and non-executable memory to mitigate kernel memory corruption from the use-after-free vulnerability.
RA-5 requires vulnerability scanning to identify systems with unpatched Linux kernels vulnerable to CVE-2022-49111.