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Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime

CVE-2024-42152

Severity Medium
Score 4.7/10

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: nvmet: fix a possible leak when destroy a ctrl during qp establishment In nvmet_sq_destroy we capture sq->ctrl early and if it is non-NULL we know that a ctrl was allocated (in the admin connect request handler) and we need to release pending AERs, clear ctrl->sqs and sq->ctrl (for nvme-loop primarily), and drop the final reference on the ctrl. However, a small window is possible where nvmet_sq_destroy starts (as a result of the client giving up and disconnecting) concurrently with the nvme admin connect cmd (which may be in an early stage). But *before* kill_and_confirm of sq->ref (i.e. the admin connect managed to get an sq live reference). In this case, sq->ctrl was allocated however after it was captured in a local variable in nvmet_sq_destroy. This prevented the final reference drop on the ctrl. Solve this by re-capturing the sq->ctrl after all inflight request has completed, where for sure sq->ctrl reference is final, and move forward based on that. This issue was observed in an environment with many hosts connecting multiple ctrls simoutanuosly, creating a delay in allocating a ctrl leading up to this race window.

  • HIGH
  • 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