CVE-2021-41229

BlueZ is a Bluetooth protocol stack for Linux. In affected versions a vulnerability exists in sdp_cstate_alloc_buf which allocates memory which will always be hung in the singly linked list of cstates and will not be freed. This will cause a memory leak over time. The data can be a very large object, which can be caused by an attacker continuously sending sdp packets and this may cause the service of the target device to crash.

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://github.com/bluez/bluez/security/advisories/GHSA-3fqg-r8j5-f5xq
• https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2021/11/msg00022.html
• https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2022/10/msg00026.html
• https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20211203-0004/