CVE-2024-50236 wifi: ath10k: Fix memory leak in management tx
A memory leak in the ath10k WiFi 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-2024-50236?
CVE-2024-50236 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 9 Nov 2024. 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:
wifi: ath10k: Fix memory leak in management tx
In the current logic, memory is allocated for storing the MSDU context during management packet TX but this memory is not being freed during management TX completion. Similar leaks are seen in the management TX cleanup logic.
Kmemleak reports this problem as below,
unreferenced object 0xffffff80b64ed250 (size 16): comm "kworker/u16:7", pid 148, jiffies 4294687130 (age 714.199s) hex dump (first 16 bytes): 00 2b d8 d8 80 ff ff ff c4 74 e9 fd 07 00 00 00 .+.......t...... backtrace: [<ffffffe6e7b245dc>] __kmem_cache_alloc_node+0x1e4/0x2d8 [<ffffffe6e7adde88>] kmalloc_trace+0x48/0x110 [<ffffffe6bbd765fc>] ath10k_wmi_tlv_op_gen_mgmt_tx_send+0xd4/0x1d8 [ath10k_core] [<ffffffe6bbd3eed4>] ath10k_mgmt_over_wmi_tx_work+0x134/0x298 [ath10k_core] [<ffffffe6e78d5974>] process_scheduled_works+0x1ac/0x400 [<ffffffe6e78d60b8>] worker_thread+0x208/0x328 [<ffffffe6e78dc890>] kthread+0x100/0x1c0 [<ffffffe6e78166c0>] ret_from_fork+0x10/0x20
Free the memory during completion and cleanup to fix the leak.
Protect the mgmt_pending_tx idr_remove() operation in ath10k_wmi_tlv_op_cleanup_mgmt_tx_send() using ar->data_lock similar to other instances.
Tested-on: WCN3990 hw1.0 SNOC WLAN.HL.2.0-01387-QCAHLSWMTPLZ-1
Weakness: CWE-401
Which versions are affected by CVE-2024-50236?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Linux kernel.
How do I fix CVE-2024-50236?
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-2024-50236 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2024-50236 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
Sources
Also known as AZL-53174, AZL-53192, BELL-CVE-2024-50236, DEBIAN-CVE-2024-50236, GHSA-rwhv-4jcg-g276, UBUNTU-CVE-2024-50236.