CVE-2019-19079

A memory leak in the qrtr_tun_write_iter() function in net/qrtr/tun.c in the Linux kernel before 5.3 allows attackers to cause a denial of service (memory consumption), aka CID-a21b7f0cff19.

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

• https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v5.x/ChangeLog-5.3
• https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/a21b7f0cff1906a93a0130b74713b15a0b36481d
• https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20191205-0001/
• https://usn.ubuntu.com/4258-1/