CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2021-29649

Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime

Published: Mar 30, 2021 | Modified: Nov 07, 2023
CVSS 3.x
5.5
MEDIUM
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CVSS 2.x
4.9 MEDIUM
AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:C
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

An issue was discovered in the Linux kernel before 5.11.11. The user mode driver (UMD) has a copy_process() memory leak, related to a lack of cleanup steps in kernel/usermode_driver.c and kernel/bpf/preload/bpf_preload_kern.c, aka CID-f60a85cad677.

Weakness

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

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Linux_kernel Linux * 5.11.11 (excluding)

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