🛡️ CVE-2022-50838 on Debian — linux

⚪ Unknown ✅ No Known Exploit OSV
N/A
CVSS Score
0 Low4 Medium7 High9 Critical10

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: stream: purge sk_error_queue in sk_stream_kill_queues() Changheon Lee reported TCP socket leaks, with a nice repro. It seems we leak TCP sockets with the following sequence: 1) SOF_TIMESTAMPING_TX_ACK is enabled on the socket. Each ACK will cook an skb put in error queue, from __skb_tstamp_tx(). __skb_tstamp_tx() is using skb_clone(), unless SOF_TIMESTAMPING_OPT_TSONLY was also requested. 2) If the application is also using MSG_ZEROCOPY, then we put in the error queue cloned skbs that had a struct ubuf_info attached to them. Whenever an struct ubuf_info is allocated, sock_zerocopy_alloc() does a sock_hold(). As long as the cloned skbs are still in sk_error_queue, socket refcount is kept elevated. 3) Application closes the socket, while error queue is not empty. Since tcp_close() no longer purges the socket error queue, we might end up with a TCP socket with at least one skb in error queue keeping the socket alive forever. This bug can be (ab)used to consume all kernel memory and freeze the host. We need to purge the error queue, with proper synchronization against concurrent writers.

Distribution advisory

This page covers CVE-2022-50838 as tracked by Debian, for the package linux. The fix is available in version 6.1.4-1; earlier versions remain affected.

Affected software

DEBIAN-CVE-2022-50838 is recorded against 1 package.

  • linux (fixed in 6.1.4-1)

Timeline and source

Published on 30 December 2025 and last revised on 4 August 2026. No public exploit is currently recorded for this entry. Record sourced from OSV.

References

security-tracker.debian.org (Advisory)

CVE-2022-50838 on other distributions

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Details

Severity Unknown
CVSS Score N/A
CVSS Vector N/A
CWE N/A
Public Exploit ✅ No
Source OSV
Published 2025-12-30
Updated 2026-08-20
Modified 2026-08-04
Fix URL N/A

Affected Packages

Software From version Fixed in
linux 6.1.4-1

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