CVE-2023-53396: ubifs: Fix memory leak in do_rename

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: 2025-09-18 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-401

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ubifs: Fix memory leak in do_rename If renaming a file in an encrypted directory, function fscrypt_setup_filename allocates memory for a file name. This name is never used, and before returning to the caller the memory for it is not freed. When running kmemleak on it we see that it is registered as a leak. The report below is triggered by a simple program 'rename' that renames a file in an encrypted directory: unreferenced object 0xffff888101502840 (size 32): comm "rename", pid 9404, jiffies 4302582475 (age 435.735s) backtrace: __kmem_cache_alloc_node __kmalloc fscrypt_setup_filename do_rename ubifs_rename vfs_rename do_renameat2 To fix this we can remove the call to fscrypt_setup_filename as it's not needed.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 5.15.33 before 5.15.112; from 5.16.19 before 5.17; from 5.17.2 before 6.1.28; from 6.2 before 6.2.15; from 6.3 before 6.3.2 — fixed in 5.15.112, 5.17, 6.1.28, 6.2.15, 6.3.2

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 5.15.112, 5.17, 6.1.28, 6.2.15. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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