CVE-2020-12768

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2020-05-09 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-401

Description

An issue was discovered in the Linux kernel before 5.6. svm_cpu_uninit in arch/x86/kvm/svm.c has a memory leak, aka CID-d80b64ff297e. NOTE: third parties dispute this issue because it's a one-time leak at the boot, the size is negligible, and it can't be triggered at will

Affected products

Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 18.04, 19.10, 20.04
Debian Linux: 10.0
Linux kernel: before 5.6 — fixed in 5.6

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 5.6. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1171736#c3
https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v5.x/ChangeLog-5.6
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=d80b64ff297e40c2b6f7d7abc1b3eba70d22a068
https://usn.ubuntu.com/4411-1/
https://usn.ubuntu.com/4412-1/
https://usn.ubuntu.com/4413-1/
https://www.debian.org/security/2020/dsa-4699
https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1171736#c3
https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v5.x/ChangeLog-5.6
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=d80b64ff297e40c2b6f7d7abc1b3eba70d22a068
https://usn.ubuntu.com/4411-1/
https://usn.ubuntu.com/4412-1/

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