CVE-2022-49949 firmware_loader: Fix memory leak in firmware upload

What is CVE-2022-49949?

CVE-2022-49949 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 18 Jun 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:

firmware_loader: Fix memory leak in firmware upload

In the case of firmware-upload, an instance of struct fw_upload is allocated in firmware_upload_register(). This data needs to be freed in fw_dev_release(). Create a new fw_upload_free() function in sysfs_upload.c to handle the firmware-upload specific memory frees and incorporate the missing kfree call for the fw_upload structure.

Weakness: CWE-401

Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-49949?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2022-49949?

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-2022-49949 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-49949 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-2022-49949, GHSA-wwqv-j45w-mmqp, UBUNTU-CVE-2022-49949.