Vulnerability Database

374,345

Total vulnerabilities in the database

CVE-2022-50435 — linux / linux_kernel

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

ext4: avoid crash when inline data creation follows DIO write

When inode is created and written to using direct IO, there is nothing to clear the EXT4_STATE_MAY_INLINE_DATA flag. Thus when inode gets truncated later to say 1 byte and written using normal write, we will try to store the data as inline data. This confuses the code later because the inode now has both normal block and inline data allocated and the confusion manifests for example as:

kernel BUG at fs/ext4/inode.c:2721! invalid opcode: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP KASAN CPU: 0 PID: 359 Comm: repro Not tainted 5.19.0-rc8-00001-g31ba1e3b8305-dirty #15 Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS 1.16.0-1.fc36 04/01/2014 RIP: 0010:ext4_writepages+0x363d/0x3660 RSP: 0018:ffffc90000ccf260 EFLAGS: 00010293 RAX: ffffffff81e1abcd RBX: 0000008000000000 RCX: ffff88810842a180 RDX: 0000000000000000 RSI: 0000008000000000 RDI: 0000000000000000 RBP: ffffc90000ccf650 R08: ffffffff81e17d58 R09: ffffed10222c680b R10: dfffe910222c680c R11: 1ffff110222c680a R12: ffff888111634128 R13: ffffc90000ccf880 R14: 0000008410000000 R15: 0000000000000001 FS: 00007f72635d2640(0000) GS:ffff88811b000000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 CR2: 0000565243379180 CR3: 000000010aa74000 CR4: 0000000000150eb0 Call Trace: <TASK> do_writepages+0x397/0x640 filemap_fdatawrite_wbc+0x151/0x1b0 file_write_and_wait_range+0x1c9/0x2b0 ext4_sync_file+0x19e/0xa00 vfs_fsync_range+0x17b/0x190 ext4_buffered_write_iter+0x488/0x530 ext4_file_write_iter+0x449/0x1b90 vfs_write+0xbcd/0xf40 ksys_write+0x198/0x2c0 __x64_sys_write+0x7b/0x90 do_syscall_64+0x3d/0x90 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x63/0xcd </TASK>

Fix the problem by clearing EXT4_STATE_MAY_INLINE_DATA when we are doing direct IO write to a file.

  • Published: Oct 1, 2025
  • Updated: Jan 22, 2026
  • CVE: CVE-2022-50435
  • 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

No CWE or OWASP classifications available.

Frequently Asked Questions

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.