CVE-2022-49153 wireguard: socket: free skb in send6 when ipv6 is disabled
A memory leak in the Linux kernel WireGuard module when IPv6 is disabled can lead to resource exhaustion and denial of service.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Any signed-in user
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2022-49153?
CVE-2022-49153 is a medium-severity memory corruption vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 26 Feb 2025. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
wireguard: socket: free skb in send6 when ipv6 is disabled
I got a memory leak report:
unreferenced object 0xffff8881191fc040 (size 232): comm "kworker/u17:0", pid 23193, jiffies 4295238848 (age 3464.870s) hex dump (first 32 bytes): 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ backtrace: [<ffffffff814c3ef4>] slab_post_alloc_hook+0x84/0x3b0 [<ffffffff814c8977>] kmem_cache_alloc_node+0x167/0x340 [<ffffffff832974fb>] __alloc_skb+0x1db/0x200 [<ffffffff82612b5d>] wg_socket_send_buffer_to_peer+0x3d/0xc0 [<ffffffff8260e94a>] wg_packet_send_handshake_initiation+0xfa/0x110 [<ffffffff8260ec81>] wg_packet_handshake_send_worker+0x21/0x30 [<ffffffff8119c558>] process_one_work+0x2e8/0x770 [<ffffffff8119ca2a>] worker_thread+0x4a/0x4b0 [<ffffffff811a88e0>] kthread+0x120/0x160 [<ffffffff8100242f>] ret_from_fork+0x1f/0x30
In function wg_socket_send_buffer_as_reply_to_skb() or wg_socket_send_ buffer_to_peer(), the semantics of send6() is required to free skb. But when CONFIG_IPV6 is disable, kfree_skb() is missing. This patch adds it to fix this bug.
Weakness: CWE-401
Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-49153?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Linux kernel.
How do I fix CVE-2022-49153?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Upgrade to the fixed version. Memory-safe languages, compiler hardening and fuzzing prevent most new cases. More about Memory corruption.
Is CVE-2022-49153 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-49153 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
Sources
Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2022-49153, GHSA-g9g4-w2mf-449q, UBUNTU-CVE-2022-49153.