How should we interpret CVSS severity scores?

CVSS estimates technical severity, but it does not automatically equal business risk. Prioritize using context like internet exposure, asset criticality, known exploitation, and whether compensating controls exist. A Medium CVSS on an exposed production system can be more urgent than a Critical on an isolated non-production host.

Vulnerability Database

Q: What is a Vulnerability (CVE) and why does it matter?

A security vulnerability is a weakness in software, hardware, or configuration that can be exploited to compromise confidentiality, integrity, or availability. Many vulnerabilities are tracked as CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), which provide a standardized identifier so teams can coordinate patching, mitigation, and risk assessment across tools and vendors.

Q: What's the difference between a vulnerability, an exploit, and a zero-day?

A vulnerability is the underlying weakness. An exploit is the method or code used to take advantage of it. A zero-day is a vulnerability that is unknown to the vendor or has no publicly available fix when attackers begin using it. Risk increases sharply when exploitation becomes reliable or widespread.

Q: Why do vulnerabilities keep reappearing in our environment?

Recurring findings usually come from incomplete asset discovery, inconsistent patch management, inherited images, and configuration drift. In modern environments, you also need to watch the software supply chain: dependencies, containers, build pipelines, and third-party services can reintroduce the same weakness even after you patch a single host.

Q: How do we prioritize remediation without burning out the team?

Use a repeatable triage model: focus first on externally exposed assets, high-value systems (identity, VPN, email, production), vulnerabilities with known exploits, and issues that enable remote code execution or privilege escalation. Then enforce patch SLAs and track progress so remediation is steady, not reactive.

Q: How can SynScan help reduce vulnerability risk over time?

SynScan combines attack surface monitoring and continuous security auditing to keep your inventory current, flag high-impact vulnerabilities early, and help you turn raw findings into a practical remediation plan.

373,546

Total vulnerabilities in the database

CVE-2022-50004 — linux / linux_kernel

NULL Pointer Dereference

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

xfrm: policy: fix metadata dst->dev xmit null pointer dereference

When we try to transmit an skb with metadata_dst attached (i.e. dst->dev == NULL) through xfrm interface we can hit a null pointer dereference[1] in xfrmi_xmit2() -> xfrm_lookup_with_ifid() due to the check for a loopback skb device when there's no policy which dereferences dst->dev unconditionally. Not having dst->dev can be interepreted as it not being a loopback device, so just add a check for a null dst_orig->dev.

With this fix xfrm interface's Tx error counters go up as usual.

[1] net-next calltrace captured via netconsole: BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 00000000000000c0 #PF: supervisor read access in kernel mode #PF: error_code(0x0000) - not-present page PGD 0 P4D 0 Oops: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP CPU: 1 PID: 7231 Comm: ping Kdump: loaded Not tainted 5.19.0+ #24 Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009), BIOS 1.16.0-1.fc36 04/01/2014 RIP: 0010:xfrm_lookup_with_ifid+0x5eb/0xa60 Code: 8d 74 24 38 e8 26 a4 37 00 48 89 c1 e9 12 fc ff ff 49 63 ed 41 83 fd be 0f 85 be 01 00 00 41 be ff ff ff ff 45 31 ed 48 8b 03 <f6> 80 c0 00 00 00 08 75 0f 41 80 bc 24 19 0d 00 00 01 0f 84 1e 02 RSP: 0018:ffffb0db82c679f0 EFLAGS: 00010246 RAX: 0000000000000000 RBX: ffffd0db7fcad430 RCX: ffffb0db82c67a10 RDX: 0000000000000000 RSI: 0000000000000000 RDI: ffffb0db82c67a80 RBP: ffffb0db82c67a80 R08: ffffb0db82c67a14 R09: 0000000000000000 R10: 0000000000000000 R11: ffff8fa449667dc8 R12: ffffffff966db880 R13: 0000000000000000 R14: 00000000ffffffff R15: 0000000000000000 FS: 00007ff35c83f000(0000) GS:ffff8fa478480000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 CR2: 00000000000000c0 CR3: 000000001ebb7000 CR4: 0000000000350ee0 Call Trace: <TASK> xfrmi_xmit+0xde/0x460 ? tcf_bpf_act+0x13d/0x2a0 dev_hard_start_xmit+0x72/0x1e0 __dev_queue_xmit+0x251/0xd30 ip_finish_output2+0x140/0x550 ip_push_pending_frames+0x56/0x80 raw_sendmsg+0x663/0x10a0 ? try_charge_memcg+0x3fd/0x7a0 ? __mod_memcg_lruvec_state+0x93/0x110 ? sock_sendmsg+0x30/0x40 sock_sendmsg+0x30/0x40 __sys_sendto+0xeb/0x130 ? handle_mm_fault+0xae/0x280 ? do_user_addr_fault+0x1e7/0x680 ? kvm_read_and_reset_apf_flags+0x3b/0x50 __x64_sys_sendto+0x20/0x30 do_syscall_64+0x34/0x80 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x46/0xb0 RIP: 0033:0x7ff35cac1366 Code: eb 0b 00 f7 d8 64 89 02 48 c7 c0 ff ff ff ff eb b8 0f 1f 00 41 89 ca 64 8b 04 25 18 00 00 00 85 c0 75 11 b8 2c 00 00 00 0f 05 <48> 3d 00 f0 ff ff 77 72 c3 90 55 48 83 ec 30 44 89 4c 24 2c 4c 89 RSP: 002b:00007fff738e4028 EFLAGS: 00000246 ORIG_RAX: 000000000000002c RAX: ffffffffffffffda RBX: 00007fff738e57b0 RCX: 00007ff35cac1366 RDX: 0000000000000040 RSI: 0000557164e4b450 RDI: 0000000000000003 RBP: 0000557164e4b450 R08: 00007fff738e7a2c R09: 0000000000000010 R10: 0000000000000000 R11: 0000000000000246 R12: 0000000000000040 R13: 00007fff738e5770 R14: 00007fff738e4030 R15: 0000001d00000001 </TASK> Modules linked in: netconsole veth br_netfilter bridge bonding virtio_net [last unloaded: netconsole] CR2: 00000000000000c0

Published: Jun 18, 2025
Updated: Nov 15, 2025
CVE: CVE-2022-50004
Severity: Medium
Exploit:
CISA KEV:

CVSS v3:

Severity: Medium
Score: 5.5
AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

CWEs:

CWE-476

Affected Software
References

Software	From	Fixed in
linux / linux_kernel	5.10.118	5.10.140
linux / linux_kernel	5.15	5.15.64
linux / linux_kernel	5.16	5.19.6
linux / linux_kernel	6.0-rc1	6.0-rc1.x
linux / linux_kernel	6.0-rc2	6.0-rc2.x

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Vulnerability (CVE) and why does it matter?

A security vulnerability is a weakness in software, hardware, or configuration that can be exploited to compromise confidentiality, integrity, or availability. Many vulnerabilities are tracked as CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), which provide a standardized identifier so teams can coordinate patching, mitigation, and risk assessment across tools and vendors.

CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) estimates technical severity, but it doesn't automatically equal business risk. Prioritize using context like internet exposure, affected asset criticality, known exploitation (proof-of-concept or in-the-wild), and whether compensating controls exist. A "Medium" CVSS on an exposed, production system can be more urgent than a "Critical" on an isolated, non-production host.

A vulnerability is the underlying weakness. An exploit is the method or code used to take advantage of it. A zero-day is a vulnerability that is unknown to the vendor or has no publicly available fix when attackers begin using it. In practice, risk increases sharply when exploitation becomes reliable or widespread.

Recurring findings usually come from incomplete Asset Discovery, inconsistent patch management, inherited images, and configuration drift. In modern environments, you also need to watch the software supply chain: dependencies, containers, build pipelines, and third-party services can reintroduce the same weakness even after you patch a single host. Unknown or unmanaged assets (often called Shadow IT) are a common reason the same issues resurface.

Use a simple, repeatable triage model: focus first on externally exposed assets, high-value systems (identity, VPN, email, production), vulnerabilities with known exploits, and issues that enable remote code execution or privilege escalation. Then enforce patch SLAs and track progress using consistent metrics so remediation is steady, not reactive.

SynScan combines attack surface monitoring and continuous security auditing to keep your inventory current, flag high-impact vulnerabilities early, and help you turn raw findings into a practical remediation plan.