Vulnerabilities > CVE-2022-48809 - Memory Leak vulnerability in Linux Kernel

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: fix a memleak when uncloning an skb dst and its metadata When uncloning an skb dst and its associated metadata, a new dst+metadata is allocated and later replaces the old one in the skb. This is helpful to have a non-shared dst+metadata attached to a specific skb. The issue is the uncloned dst+metadata is initialized with a refcount of 1, which is increased to 2 before attaching it to the skb. When tun_dst_unclone returns, the dst+metadata is only referenced from a single place (the skb) while its refcount is 2. Its refcount will never drop to 0 (when the skb is consumed), leading to a memory leak. Fix this by removing the call to dst_hold in tun_dst_unclone, as the dst+metadata refcount is already 1.

Vulnerable Configurations

Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE)

• CWE-401 - Improper Release of Memory Before Removing Last Reference ('Memory Leak')

References