CVE-2022-50631: RISC-V: kexec: Fix memory leak of fdt buffer

Severity: unknown
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: 2025-12-09 · updated 2026-06-17

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: RISC-V: kexec: Fix memory leak of fdt buffer This is reported by kmemleak detector: unreferenced object 0xff60000082864000 (size 9588): comm "kexec", pid 146, jiffies 4294900634 (age 64.788s) hex dump (first 32 bytes): d0 0d fe ed 00 00 12 ed 00 00 00 48 00 00 11 40 ...........H...@ 00 00 00 28 00 00 00 11 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 00 ...(............ backtrace: [<00000000f95b17c4>] kmemleak_alloc+0x34/0x3e [<00000000b9ec8e3e>] kmalloc_order+0x9c/0xc4 [<00000000a95cf02e>] kmalloc_order_trace+0x34/0xb6 [<00000000f01e68b4>] __kmalloc+0x5c2/0x62a [<000000002bd497b2>] kvmalloc_node+0x66/0xd6 [<00000000906542fa>] of_kexec_alloc_and_setup_fdt+0xa6/0x6ea [<00000000e1166bde>] elf_kexec_load+0x206/0x4ec [<0000000036548e09>] kexec_image_load_default+0x40/0x4c [<0000000079fbe1b4>] sys_kexec_file_load+0x1c4/0x322 [<0000000040c62c03>] ret_from_syscall+0x0/0x2 In elf_kexec_load(), a buffer is allocated via kvmalloc() to store fdt. While it's not freed back to system when kexec kernel is reloaded or unloaded. Then memory leak is caused. Fix it by introducing riscv specific function arch_kimage_file_post_load_cleanup(), and freeing the buffer there.

Affected products

Linux kernel: 5.19 — fixed in 6.2

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.2. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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