# CVE-2022-24756: Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime in Bareos Director

> An attacker can cause a denial of service in Bareos Director by flooding failed PAM authentication attempts, leading to memory exhaustion.

- **Severity:** High 7.5 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Not needed
- **Attackable:** Over the internet
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** No
- **Published:** 15 Mar 2022
- **Updated:** 22 Apr 2025
- **Also known as:** GHSA-jh55-4wgw-xc9j, UBUNTU-CVE-2022-24756

## What is CVE-2022-24756?

CVE-2022-24756 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in bareos, published on 15 Mar 2022. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

Bareos is open source software for backup, archiving, and recovery of data for operating systems. When Bareos Director >= 18.2 but prior to 21.1.0, 20.0.6, and 19.2.12 is built and configured for PAM authentication, a failed PAM authentication will leak a small amount of memory. An attacker that is able to use the PAM Console (i.e. by knowing the shared secret or via the WebUI) can flood the Director with failing login attempts which will eventually lead to an out-of-memory condition in which the Director will not work anymore. Bareos Director versions 21.1.0, 20.0.6 and 19.2.12 contain a Bugfix for this problem. Users who are unable to upgrade may disable PAM authentication as a workaround.

Weakness: CWE-401 (Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-24756?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Bareos Bareos.

## How do I fix CVE-2022-24756?

No fix has been published for CVE-2022-24756 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

## Is CVE-2022-24756 being exploited?

It is not confirmed as exploited in the wild, but public exploit code for CVE-2022-24756 exists.

## Other vulnerabilities in bareos

- [CVE-2022-24755](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-24755/): Incorrect Authorization in Bareos Director (high 8.1)
- [CVE-2017-14610](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2017-14610/): Race condition in n/a (high 7.8)
- [CVE-2020-4042](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2020-4042/): Authentication bypass in Bareos (medium 6.8)
- [CVE-2020-11061](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2020-11061/): Heap-based Buffer Overflow in Bareos Director (medium 6.0)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2022-24756 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2022-24756 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in bareos, published on 15 Mar 2022. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: It is not confirmed as exploited in the wild, but public exploit code for CVE-2022-24756 exists.

Affected product: bareos. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-24756/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-24756/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2022-24756
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-24756
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2022-24756

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-24756/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.