CVE-2023-53349 media: ov2740: Fix memleak in ov2740_init_controls()

Medium 5.5 Published Updated

A memory leak in the ov2740 camera driver allows attackers to exhaust kernel memory, potentially causing a 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-2023-53349?

CVE-2023-53349 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 17 Sep 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:

media: ov2740: Fix memleak in ov2740_init_controls()

There is a kmemleak when testing the media/i2c/ov2740.c with bpf mock device:

unreferenced object 0xffff8881090e19e0 (size 16): comm "51-i2c-ov2740", pid 278, jiffies 4294781584 (age 23.613s) hex dump (first 16 bytes): 00 f3 7c 0b 81 88 ff ff 80 75 6a 09 81 88 ff ff ..|......uj..... backtrace: [<000000004e9fad8f>] __kmalloc_node+0x44/0x1b0 [<0000000039c802f4>] kvmalloc_node+0x34/0x180 [<000000009b8b5c63>] v4l2_ctrl_handler_init_class+0x11d/0x180 [videodev] [<0000000038644056>] ov2740_probe+0x37d/0x84f [ov2740] [<0000000092489f59>] i2c_device_probe+0x28d/0x680 [<000000001038babe>] really_probe+0x17c/0x3f0 [<0000000098c7af1c>] __driver_probe_device+0xe3/0x170 [<00000000e1b3dc24>] device_driver_attach+0x34/0x80 [<000000005a04a34d>] bind_store+0x10b/0x1a0 [<00000000ce25d4f2>] drv_attr_store+0x49/0x70 [<000000007d9f4e9a>] sysfs_kf_write+0x8c/0xb0 [<00000000be6cff0f>] kernfs_fop_write_iter+0x216/0x2e0 [<0000000031ddb40a>] vfs_write+0x658/0x810 [<0000000041beecdd>] ksys_write+0xd6/0x1b0 [<0000000023755840>] do_syscall_64+0x38/0x90 [<00000000b2cc2da2>] entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x63/0xcd

ov2740_init_controls() won't clean all the allocated resources in fail path, which may causes the memleaks. Add v4l2_ctrl_handler_free() to prevent memleak.

Weakness: CWE-401

Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-53349?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2023-53349?

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-2023-53349 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-53349 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as BELL-CVE-2023-53349, DEBIAN-CVE-2023-53349, GHSA-8g4h-m7m7-62x8, UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53349.

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