CVE-2022-49468: thermal/core: Fix memory leak in __thermal_cooling_device_register()

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: thermal/core: Fix memory leak in __thermal_cooling_device_register() I got memory leak as follows when doing fault injection test: unreferenced object 0xffff888010080000 (size 264312): comm "182", pid 102533, jiffies 4296434960 (age 10.100s) hex dump (first 32 bytes): 00 00 00 00 ad 4e ad de ff ff ff ff 00 00 00 00 .....N.......... ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff 40 7f 1f b9 ff ff ff ff ........@....... backtrace: [<0000000038b2f4fc>] kmalloc_order_trace+0x1d/0x110 mm/slab_common.c:969 [<00000000ebcb8da5>] __kmalloc+0x373/0x420 include/linux/slab.h:510 [<0000000084137f13>] thermal_cooling_device_setup_sysfs+0x15d/0x2d0 include/linux/slab.h:586 [<00000000352b8755>] __thermal_cooling_device_register+0x332/0xa60 drivers/thermal/thermal_core.c:927 [<00000000fb9f331b>] devm_thermal_of_cooling_device_register+0x6b/0xf0 drivers/thermal/thermal_core.c:1041 [<000000009b8012d2>] max6650_probe.cold+0x557/0x6aa drivers/hwmon/max6650.c:211 [<00000000da0b7e04>] i2c_device_probe+0x472/0xac0 drivers/i2c/i2c-core-base.c:561 If device_register() fails, thermal_cooling_device_destroy_sysfs() need be called to free the memory allocated in thermal_cooling_device_setup_sysfs().

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 4.14 before 5.10.121; from 5.11 before 5.15.46; from 5.16 before 5.17.14; from 5.18 before 5.18.3 — fixed in 5.10.121, 5.15.46, 5.17.14, 5.18.3

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 5.10.121, 5.15.46, 5.17.14, 5.18.3. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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