CVE-2022-49648: tracing/histograms: Fix memory leak problem

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2022-49648 is a medium (CVSS 5.5) vulnerability in linux. EPSS estimates a 0.27% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 19.6% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 26-02-2025
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 23-05-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: tracing/histograms: Fix memory leak problem This reverts commit 46bbe5c671e06f070428b9be142cc4ee5cedebac. As commit 46bbe5c671e0 ("tracing: fix double free") said, the "double free" problem reported by clang static analyzer is: > In parse_var_defs() if there is a problem allocating > var_defs.expr, the earlier var_defs.name is freed. > This free is duplicated by free_var_defs() which frees > the rest of the list. However, if there is a problem allocating N-th var_defs.expr: + in parse_var_defs(), the freed 'earlier var_defs.name' is actually the N-th var_defs.name; + then in free_var_defs(), the names from 0th to (N-1)-th are freed; IF ALLOCATING PROBLEM HAPPENED HERE!!! -+ \ | 0th 1th (N-1)-th N-th V +-------------+-------------+-----+-------------+----------- var_defs: | name | expr | name | expr | ... | name | expr | name | /// +-------------+-------------+-----+-------------+----------- These two frees don't act on same name, so there was no "double free" problem before. Conversely, after that commit, we get a "memory leak" problem because the above "N-th var_defs.name" is not freed. If enable CONFIG_DEBUG_KMEMLEAK and inject a fault at where the N-th var_defs.expr allocated, then execute on shell like: $ echo 'hist:key=call_site:val=$v1,$v2:v1=bytes_req,v2=bytes_alloc' > \ /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/events/kmem/kmalloc/trigger Then kmemleak reports: unreferenced object 0xffff8fb100ef3518 (size 8): comm "bash", pid 196, jiffies 4295681690 (age 28.538s) hex dump (first 8 bytes): 76 31 00 00 b1 8f ff ff v1...... backtrace: [<0000000038fe4895>] kstrdup+0x2d/0x60 [<00000000c99c049a>] event_hist_trigger_parse+0x206f/0x20e0 [<00000000ae70d2cc>] trigger_process_regex+0xc0/0x110 [<0000000066737a4c>] event_trigger_write+0x75/0xd0 [<000000007341e40c>] vfs_write+0xbb/0x2a0 [<0000000087fde4c2>] ksys_write+0x59/0xd0 [<00000000581e9cdf>] do_syscall_64+0x3a/0x80 [<00000000cf3b065c>] entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x46/0xb0

• CWE-401Missing Release of Memory after Effective LifetimeThe product does not sufficiently track and release allocated memory after it has been used, making the memory unavailable for reallocation and reuse.