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Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime

CVE-2021-47231

Severity Medium
Score 5.5/10

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: can: mcba_usb: fix memory leak in mcba_usb Syzbot reported memory leak in SocketCAN driver for Microchip CAN BUS Analyzer Tool. The problem was in unfreed usb_coherent. In mcba_usb_start() 20 coherent buffers are allocated and there is nothing, that frees them: 1) In callback function the urb is resubmitted and that's all 2) In disconnect function urbs are simply killed, but URB_FREE_BUFFER is not set (see mcba_usb_start) and this flag cannot be used with coherent buffers. Fail log: | [ 1354.053291][ T8413] mcba_usb 1-1:0.0 can0: device disconnected | [ 1367.059384][ T8420] kmemleak: 20 new suspected memory leaks (see /sys/kernel/debug/kmem) So, all allocated buffers should be freed with usb_free_coherent() explicitly NOTE: The same pattern for allocating and freeing coherent buffers is used in drivers/net/can/usb/kvaser_usb/kvaser_usb_core.c

  • 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