VulnerabilityPublished 8 Nov 2024Updated 4 Nov 2025

CVE-2024-50194: Linux kernel · arm64: probes: Fix uprobes for big-endian kernels

Source GCVE Database

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Not known to be exploited · CVSS 5.5 Medium.

Data as of 29 Oct 2026, 23:16 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

5.5Medium

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Attack Vector: Local
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: Low
User Interaction: None
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: None
Integrity: None
Availability: High

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Local: The vulnerable component is not bound to the network stack and the attacker’s path is via read/write/execute capabilities. Either: the attacker exploits the vulnerability by accessing the target system locally (e.g., keyboard, console), or remotely (e.g., SSH); or the attacker relies on User Interaction by another person to perform actions required to exploit the vulnerability (e.g., tricking a legitimate user into opening a malicious document).
Attack Complexity: Low: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
Privileges Required: Low: The attacker is authorized with (i.e., requires) privileges that provide basic user capabilities that could normally affect only settings and files owned by a user. Alternatively, an attacker with Low privileges may have the ability to cause an impact only to non-sensitive resources.
User Interaction: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without any interaction from any user.
Scope: Unchanged: An exploited vulnerability can only affect resources managed by the same security authority. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are either the same, or both are managed by the same security authority.
Confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the impacted component.
Integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the impacted component.
Availability: High: There is total loss of availability, resulting in the attacker being able to fully deny access to resources in the impacted component; this loss is either sustained (while the attacker continues to deliver the attack) or persistent (the condition persists even after the attack has completed). Alternatively, the attacker has the ability to deny some availability, but the loss of availability presents a direct, serious consequence to the impacted component (e.g., the attacker cannot disrupt existing connections, but can prevent new connections; the attacker can repeatedly exploit a vulnerability that, in each instance of a successful attack, leaks a only small amount of memory, but after repeated exploitation causes a service to become completely unavailable).

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 8 Nov 2024
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponized: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 29 Oct 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponized: A Metasploit exploit module or Exploit-DB entry exists (Metasploit scanner modules do not count), or CISA SSVC or the CVSS exploit maturity reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

ghsa-8p49-gjw4-jcmp

What to do

AI-suggested

A fix for this vulnerability has been implemented in the Linux kernel by changing the internal uprobes data structures to handle little-endian instruction encoding explicitly and adding the necessary conversions. Users should apply the official Linux kernel updates that include this patch to resolve the issue. No additional mitigation steps are indicated or required beyond applying the patch.

Description

CVE-2024-50194 addresses a flaw in the Linux kernel's arm64 uprobes implementation for big-endian kernels. The vulnerability arises because the uprobes code does not convert the in-memory instruction encoding, which is always little-endian, into the kernel's native big-endian format before processing. This leads to incorrect handling of instructions, including erroneous rejection of probeable instructions, unsafe stepping of instructions, and incorrect instruction simulation. The issue has been fixed by changing internal data types to explicitly handle little-endian encoding and adding proper conversions.

Impact

The vulnerability affects the correctness and safety of uprobes on arm64 big-endian Linux kernels. It may cause the kernel to reject instructions that can be safely probed, allow unsafe stepping of instructions, or simulate instructions incorrectly. This can lead to unstable or corrupted kernel behavior during dynamic tracing or debugging activities that use uprobes. The CVSS score is 5.5 (medium severity) with an impact mainly on availability (A:H) and requiring local privileges (AV:L, PR:L). There is no indication of confidentiality or integrity impact.

Summary

The Linux kernel's arm64 uprobes code was broken for big-endian kernels due to a failure to convert the little-endian in-memory instruction encoding into the kernel's native endianness before analyzing and simulating instructions. This caused multiple problems: safe instructions could be incorrectly rejected for probing, unsafe stepping out-of-line could be permitted, and instructions could be incorrectly simulated due to byte-swapped encoding. The root cause was that certain fields were encoded as arrays of bytes without endianness awareness, and type aliases masked the need for conversion. The fix involved changing these fields to __le32 types and adding __le32_to_cpu() conversions before use. This correction ensures proper recognition and simulation of instructions on big-endian arm64 kernels, preventing corruption and unsafe behavior during uprobes operations.

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