Reference page — cumulative record through Wednesday, August 19, 2026 UTC. Reference pages update as the archive grows; only dated daily editions are immutable pages of record.
Linux Linux — arm64: compat: Do not treat syscall number as ESR_ELx for a bad syscall
AV AC PR UI S C I A CVSS EPSS %ile KEV
L L L N U N N H 5.5 .0030 22.4 —
AFFECTED
Product Versions Fixed
Linux 532826f3712b607256eb30f92f23d1c604d3fa34 – —
Linux 4.17 – 5.4.198
TIMELINE
Feb 26 Reserved by Linux
Feb 26 Published (CNA: Linux)
Aug 15 ENRICHED — CVE-2022-49520 (Linux). Received CVSS 5.5 and CPE data from NVD.
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
arm64: compat: Do not treat syscall number as ESR_ELx for a bad syscall
If a compat process tries to execute an unknown system call above the
__ARM_NR_COMPAT_END number, the kernel sends a SIGILL signal to the
offending process. Information about the error is printed to dmesg in
compat_arm_syscall() -> arm64_notify_die() -> arm64_force_sig_fault() ->
arm64_show_signal().
arm64_show_signal() interprets a non-zero value for
current->thread.fault_code as an exception syndrome and displays the
message associated with the ESR_ELx.EC field (bits 31:26).
current->thread.fault_code is set in compat_arm_syscall() ->
arm64_notify_die() with the bad syscall number instead of a valid ESR_ELx
value. This means that the ESR_ELx.EC field has the value that the user set
for the syscall number and the kernel can end up printing bogus exception
messages*. For example, for the syscall number 0x68000000, which evaluates
to ESR_ELx.EC value of 0x1A (ESR_ELx_EC_FPAC) the kernel prints this error:
[ 18.349161] syscall[300]: unhandled exception: ERET/ERETAA/ERETAB, ESR 0x68000000, Oops - bad compat syscall(2) in syscall[10000+50000]
[ 18.350639] CPU: 2 PID: 300 Comm: syscall Not tainted 5.18.0-rc1 #79
[ 18.351249] Hardware name: Pine64 RockPro64 v2.0 (DT)
[..]
which is misleading, as the bad compat syscall has nothing to do with
pointer authentication.
Stop arm64_show_signal() from printing exception syndrome information by
having compat_arm_syscall() set the ESR_ELx value to 0, as it has no
meaning for an invalid system call number. The example above now becomes:
[ 19.935275] syscall[301]: unhandled exception: Oops - bad compat syscall(2) in syscall[10000+50000]
[ 19.936124] CPU: 1 PID: 301 Comm: syscall Not tainted 5.18.0-rc1-00005-g7e08006d4102 #80
[ 19.936894] Hardware name: Pine64 RockPro64 v2.0 (DT)
[..]
which although shows less information because the syscall number,
wrongfully advertised as the ESR value, is missing, it is better than
showing plainly wrong information. The syscall number can be easily
obtained with strace.
*A 32-bit value above or equal to 0x8000_0000 is interpreted as a negative
integer in compat_arm_syscal() and the condition scno < __ARM_NR_COMPAT_END
evaluates to true; the syscall will exit to userspace in this case with the
ENOSYS error code instead of arm64_notify_die() being called.
Lifecycle
Complete event history — 3 events, chronological
| Date | Event | Detail |
| February 26, 2025 | Reserved | Reserved by Linux |
| February 26, 2025 | Published | Published (CNA: Linux) |
| August 15, 2026 | ENRICHED | ENRICHED — CVE-2022-49520 (Linux). Received CVSS 5.5 and CPE data from NVD. |
Affected
Affected products and packages — 2 rows
| Vendor | Product / Package | Ecosystem | Version introduced | Fixed |
| Linux | Linux | — | 532826f3712b607256eb30f92f23d1c604d3fa34 | — |
| Linux | Linux | — | 4.17 | 5.4.198 |
About this page
This is a reference page, not a dated page of record. It assembles the complete lifecycle of CVE-2022-49520 from the CVE Program record, NVD enrichment, the CISA KEV catalog, EPSS, and OSV advisories. The box score's numbers (CVSS, EPSS, KEV status) are current as of Wednesday, August 19, 2026 UTC and are re-derived as the archive grows; only dated daily editions are immutable pages of record. The authoritative source for this identifier is cve.org.