CVE-2022-49468 thermal/core: Fix memory leak in __thermal_cooling_device_register()
A memory leak in the Linux kernel thermal core allows attackers to cause denial of service by triggering device registration failures.
- 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-2022-49468?
CVE-2022-49468 is a medium-severity denial of service 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:
thermal/core: Fix memory leak in __thermal_cooling_device_register()
I got memory leak as follows when doing fault injection test:
unreferenced object 0xffff888010080000 (size 264312): comm "182", pid 102533, jiffies 4296434960 (age 10.100s) hex dump (first 32 bytes): 00 00 00 00 ad 4e ad de ff ff ff ff 00 00 00 00 .....N.......... ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff 40 7f 1f b9 ff ff ff ff ........@....... backtrace: [<0000000038b2f4fc>] kmalloc_order_trace+0x1d/0x110 mm/slab_common.c:969 [<00000000ebcb8da5>] __kmalloc+0x373/0x420 include/linux/slab.h:510 [<0000000084137f13>] thermal_cooling_device_setup_sysfs+0x15d/0x2d0 include/linux/slab.h:586 [<00000000352b8755>] __thermal_cooling_device_register+0x332/0xa60 drivers/thermal/thermal_core.c:927 [<00000000fb9f331b>] devm_thermal_of_cooling_device_register+0x6b/0xf0 drivers/thermal/thermal_core.c:1041 [<000000009b8012d2>] max6650_probe.cold+0x557/0x6aa drivers/hwmon/max6650.c:211 [<00000000da0b7e04>] i2c_device_probe+0x472/0xac0 drivers/i2c/i2c-core-base.c:561
If device_register() fails, thermal_cooling_device_destroy_sysfs() need be called to free the memory allocated in thermal_cooling_device_setup_sysfs().
Weakness: CWE-401
Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-49468?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Linux kernel.
How do I fix CVE-2022-49468?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.
Is CVE-2022-49468 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-49468 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
Sources
Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2022-49468, GHSA-2vp4-6vg4-qh8r, UBUNTU-CVE-2022-49468.