CVE-2019-19050

A memory leak in the crypto_reportstat() function in crypto/crypto_user_stat.c in the Linux kernel through 5.3.11 allows attackers to cause a denial of service (memory consumption) by triggering crypto_reportstat_alg() failures, aka CID-c03b04dcdba1.

Weakness

The product does not sufficiently track and release allocated memory after it has been used, which slowly consumes remaining memory.

Affected Software

Potential Mitigations

• Choose a language or tool that provides automatic memory management, or makes manual memory management less error-prone.
• For example, glibc in Linux provides protection against free of invalid pointers.
• When using Xcode to target OS X or iOS, enable automatic reference counting (ARC) [REF-391].
• To help correctly and consistently manage memory when programming in C++, consider using a smart pointer class such as std::auto_ptr (defined by ISO/IEC ISO/IEC 14882:2003), std::shared_ptr and std::unique_ptr (specified by an upcoming revision of the C++ standard, informally referred to as C++ 1x), or equivalent solutions such as Boost.

References

• http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/156455/Kernel-Live-Patch-Security-Notice-LSN-0063-1.html
• https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/c03b04dcdba1da39903e23cc4d072abf8f68f2dd
• https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/O3PSDE6PTOTVBK2YTKB2TFQP2SUBVSNF/
• https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/PY7LJMSPAGRIKABJPDKQDTXYW3L5RX2T/
• https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20191205-0001/
• https://usn.ubuntu.com/4258-1/
• https://usn.ubuntu.com/4284-1/