CVE-2024-50197

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

pinctrl: intel: platform: fix error path in device_for_each_child_node()

The device_for_each_child_node() loop requires calls to fwnode_handle_put() upon early returns to decrement the refcount of the child node and avoid leaking memory if that error path is triggered.

There is one early returns within that loop in intel_platform_pinctrl_prepare_community(), but fwnode_handle_put() is missing.

Instead of adding the missing call, the scoped version of the loop can be used to simplify the code and avoid mistakes in the future if new early returns are added, as the child node is only used for parsing, and it is never assigned.

Weakness

The product does not sufficiently track and release allocated memory after it has been used, making the memory unavailable for reallocation and reuse.

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/16a6d2e685e8f9a2f51dd5a363d3f97fcad35e22
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/be3f7b9f995a6c2ee02767a0319929a2a98adf69