CVE-2022-49256: watch_queue: Actually free the watch

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2025-02-26 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-401

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: watch_queue: Actually free the watch free_watch() does everything barring actually freeing the watch object. Fix this by adding the missing kfree. kmemleak produces a report something like the following. Note that as an address can be seen in the first word, the watch would appear to have gone through call_rcu(). BUG: memory leak unreferenced object 0xffff88810ce4a200 (size 96): comm "syz-executor352", pid 3605, jiffies 4294947473 (age 13.720s) hex dump (first 32 bytes): e0 82 48 0d 81 88 ff ff 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ..H............. 80 a2 e4 0c 81 88 ff ff 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ backtrace: [<ffffffff8214e6cc>] kmalloc include/linux/slab.h:581 [inline] [<ffffffff8214e6cc>] kzalloc include/linux/slab.h:714 [inline] [<ffffffff8214e6cc>] keyctl_watch_key+0xec/0x2e0 security/keys/keyctl.c:1800 [<ffffffff8214ec84>] __do_sys_keyctl+0x3c4/0x490 security/keys/keyctl.c:2016 [<ffffffff84493a25>] do_syscall_x64 arch/x86/entry/common.c:50 [inline] [<ffffffff84493a25>] do_syscall_64+0x35/0xb0 arch/x86/entry/common.c:80 [<ffffffff84600068>] entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x44/0xae

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 5.8 before 5.10.110; from 5.11 before 5.15.33; from 5.16 before 5.16.19; from 5.17 before 5.17.2 — fixed in 5.10.110, 5.15.33, 5.16.19, 5.17.2

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 5.10.110, 5.15.33, 5.16.19, 5.17.2. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

Get alerted when CVE-2022-49256 or the next vulnerability affects your stack