CVE-2022-49902 block: Fix possible memory leak for rq_wb on add_disk failure

What is CVE-2022-49902?

CVE-2022-49902 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 1 May 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:

block: Fix possible memory leak for rq_wb on add_disk failure

kmemleak reported memory leaks in device_add_disk():

kmemleak: 3 new suspected memory leaks

unreferenced object 0xffff88800f420800 (size 512): comm "modprobe", pid 4275, jiffies 4295639067 (age 223.512s) hex dump (first 32 bytes): 04 00 00 00 08 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 00 e1 f5 05 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ backtrace: [<00000000d3662699>] kmalloc_trace+0x26/0x60 [<00000000edc7aadc>] wbt_init+0x50/0x6f0 [<0000000069601d16>] wbt_enable_default+0x157/0x1c0 [<0000000028fc393f>] blk_register_queue+0x2a4/0x420 [<000000007345a042>] device_add_disk+0x6fd/0xe40 [<0000000060e6aab0>] nbd_dev_add+0x828/0xbf0 [nbd] ...

It is because the memory allocated in wbt_enable_default() is not released in device_add_disk() error path. Normally, these memory are freed in:

del_gendisk() rq_qos_exit() rqos->ops->exit(rqos); wbt_exit()

So rq_qos_exit() is called to free the rq_wb memory for wbt_init(). However in the error path of device_add_disk(), only blk_unregister_queue() is called and make rq_wb memory leaked.

Add rq_qos_exit() to the error path to fix it.

Weakness: CWE-401

Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-49902?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2022-49902?

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-2022-49902 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-49902 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

• CVE-2026-53266 Linux Kernel Out-of-Bounds Write Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2013-6282 Linux Kernel Improper Input Validation Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2022-0185 Linux Kernel Heap-Based Buffer Overflow Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2013-2094 Linux Kernel Privilege Escalation Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2026-53362 Linux Kernel Unspecified Exploited High 7.8

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2022-49902, GHSA-8p4q-63f6-rqfp, UBUNTU-CVE-2022-49902.