CVE-2022-50639 io-wq: Fix memory leak in worker creation
A memory leak in the Linux kernel's io-wq worker creation allows local attackers to exhaust system memory, leading to 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-2022-50639?
CVE-2022-50639 is a memory corruption vulnerability in Linux, published on 9 Dec 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:
io-wq: Fix memory leak in worker creation
If the CPU mask allocation for a node fails, then the memory allocated for the 'io_wqe' struct of the current node doesn't get freed on the error handling path, since it has not yet been added to the 'wqes' array.
This was spotted when fuzzing v6.1-rc1 with Syzkaller: BUG: memory leak unreferenced object 0xffff8880093d5000 (size 1024): comm "syz-executor.2", pid 7701, jiffies 4295048595 (age 13.900s) 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: [<00000000cb463369>] __kmem_cache_alloc_node+0x18e/0x720 [<00000000147a3f9c>] kmalloc_node_trace+0x2a/0x130 [<000000004e107011>] io_wq_create+0x7b9/0xdc0 [<00000000c38b2018>] io_uring_alloc_task_context+0x31e/0x59d [<00000000867399da>] __io_uring_add_tctx_node.cold+0x19/0x1ba [<000000007e0e7a79>] io_uring_setup.cold+0x1b80/0x1dce [<00000000b545e9f6>] __x64_sys_io_uring_setup+0x5d/0x80 [<000000008a8a7508>] do_syscall_64+0x5d/0x90 [<000000004ac08bec>] entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x63/0xcd
Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-50639?
How do I fix CVE-2022-50639?
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-2022-50639 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-50639 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2022-50639, GHSA-556c-4mvg-6pqr, UBUNTU-CVE-2022-50639.