CVE-2022-49878: bpf, verifier: Fix memory leak in array reallocation for stack state

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2025-05-01 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-401

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: bpf, verifier: Fix memory leak in array reallocation for stack state If an error (NULL) is returned by krealloc(), callers of realloc_array() were setting their allocation pointers to NULL, but on error krealloc() does not touch the original allocation. This would result in a memory resource leak. Instead, free the old allocation on the error handling path. The memory leak information is as follows as also reported by Zhengchao: unreferenced object 0xffff888019801800 (size 256): comm "bpf_repo", pid 6490, jiffies 4294959200 (age 17.170s) hex dump (first 32 bytes): 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ backtrace: [<00000000b211474b>] __kmalloc_node_track_caller+0x45/0xc0 [<0000000086712a0b>] krealloc+0x83/0xd0 [<00000000139aab02>] realloc_array+0x82/0xe2 [<00000000b1ca41d1>] grow_stack_state+0xfb/0x186 [<00000000cd6f36d2>] check_mem_access.cold+0x141/0x1341 [<0000000081780455>] do_check_common+0x5358/0xb350 [<0000000015f6b091>] bpf_check.cold+0xc3/0x29d [<000000002973c690>] bpf_prog_load+0x13db/0x2240 [<00000000028d1644>] __sys_bpf+0x1605/0x4ce0 [<00000000053f29bd>] __x64_sys_bpf+0x75/0xb0 [<0000000056fedaf5>] do_syscall_64+0x35/0x80 [<000000002bd58261>] entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x63/0xcd

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 5.14 before 5.15.79; from 5.16 before 6.0.9; 6.1-rc1, 6.1-rc2, 6.1-rc3, 6.1-rc4 — fixed in 5.15.79, 6.0.9

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 5.15.79, 6.0.9. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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