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Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime

CVE-2021-47214

Severity Medium
Score 5.5/10

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: hugetlb, userfaultfd: fix reservation restore on userfaultfd error Currently in the is_continue case in hugetlb_mcopy_atomic_pte(), if we bail out using "goto out_release_unlock;" in the cases where idx >= size, or !huge_pte_none(), the code will detect that new_pagecache_page == false, and so call restore_reserve_on_error(). In this case I see restore_reserve_on_error() delete the reservation, and the following call to remove_inode_hugepages() will increment h->resv_hugepages causing a 100% reproducible leak. We should treat the is_continue case similar to adding a page into the pagecache and set new_pagecache_page to true, to indicate that there is no reservation to restore on the error path, and we need not call restore_reserve_on_error(). Rename new_pagecache_page to page_in_pagecache to make that clear.

  • LOW
  • LOCAL
  • NONE
  • UNCHANGED
  • NONE
  • LOW
  • NONE
  • HIGH

CWE-401 - Missing release of memory after effective lifetime (memory leak)

'Missing release of memory after effective lifetime (memory leak)' is a weakness that occurs when software doesn't effectively release allocated memory after it is used. If not addressed, this enables attackers to launch denial of service attacks (by crashing or hanging the program) or take advantage of other unexpected behavior resulting from low memory conditions.

References

Advisory Timeline

  • Published