CVE-2022-50722

Vulnerability

Overview

The vulnerability resides in the Intel IPU3 (Image Processing Unit 3) IMGU driver within the Linux kernel. The driver incorrectly acquires pointers to both active and try V4L2 subdev states before determining which one to use. When the sd_state argument passed to functions like v4l2_subdev_get_try_crop() is NULL, the subsequent dereference leads to a NULL pointer dereference [1].

Exploitation

Context

An attacker would need to trigger a code path where the IMGU driver processes a selection request with a NULL state pointer. This could occur through crafted V4L2 ioctl calls from userspace, potentially requiring local access to the video device node. No authentication is explicitly required beyond the ability to interact with the media subsystem.

Impact

Successful exploitation results in a kernel panic or denial of service (DoS) due to the NULL pointer dereference. The crash can disrupts system stability, potentially causing a crash of the affected system. No privilege escalation or data leakage is indicated by the available information.

Mitigation

The fix is included in Linux kernel stable updates. Users should apply the latest kernel patches from their distribution or update to a kernel version containing the commit referenced in [1]. No workaround is documented.