CVE-2022-48975

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

gpiolib: fix memory leak in gpiochip_setup_dev()

Here is a backtrace report about memory leak detected in gpiochip_setup_dev():

unreferenced object 0xffff88810b406400 (size 512): comm python3, pid 1682, jiffies 4295346908 (age 24.090s) backtrace: kmalloc_trace device_add device_private_init at drivers/base/core.c:3361 (inlined by) device_add at drivers/base/core.c:3411 cdev_device_add gpiolib_cdev_register gpiochip_setup_dev gpiochip_add_data_with_key

gcdev_register() & gcdev_unregister() would call device_add() & device_del() (no matter CONFIG_GPIO_CDEV is enabled or not) to register/unregister device.

However, if device_add() succeeds, some resource (like struct device_private allocated by device_private_init()) is not released by device_del().

Therefore, after device_add() succeeds by gcdev_register(), it needs to call put_device() to release resource in the error handle path.

Here we move forward the register of release function, and let it release every piece of resource by put_device() instead of kfree().

While at it, fix another subtle issue, i.e. when gc->ngpio is equal to 0, we still call kcalloc() and, in case of further error, kfree() on the ZERO_PTR pointer, which is not NULL. Its not a bug per se, but rather waste of the resources and potentially wrong expectation about contents of the gdev->descs variable.

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://git.kernel.org/stable/c/371363716398ed718e389bea8c5e9843a79dde4e
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/6daaa84b621485fe28c401be18debf92ae8ef04a
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ec851b23084b3a0af8bf0f5e51d33a8d678bdc49