CVE-2022-49231

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's rtw88 driver. This issue occurs due to insufficient memory allocation during hardware scans, which can lead to a buffer overwrite. A local attacker could exploit this memory corruption vulnerability to trigger access violation faults and memory leaks, potentially causing a denial of service.

A moderate severity flaw was found in the Linux kernel's rtw88 wireless LAN driver, which ships in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9. During a hardware scan, the driver allocated a buffer smaller than the amount of data actually written, so the overwrite caused the memory-management subsystem to raise access violation faults; early-return paths in the scan flow could also leak memory. A local attacker able to trigger a hardware scan on a system with affected Realtek rtw88 wireless hardware could use this memory corruption to crash the kernel, causing a denial of service. Red Hat rates this flaw CVSS 5.5 (CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H) because the evidence supports availability impact only; this differs from the CVEORG score of 7.8, which assumes high confidentiality and integrity impact that the nature of the flaw does not establish. The kernel and kernel-rt components in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 are affected, and the fix has been deferred given the moderate, availability-only impact that requires local privileges to exploit; until a fix is delivered, the residual risk is local denial of service on systems using rtw88 wireless hardware. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and 10 and Red Hat In-Vehicle OS (where the vulnerable code is not present) are not affected, and the listed Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and 8 update streams are out of support scope.

The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.

Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base, or stability.