Memory Leak Affecting kernel-tools package, versions <0:4.14.252-195.481.amzn2


Severity

Recommended
high

Based on Amazon Linux security rating.

Threat Intelligence

EPSS
0.23% (14th percentile)

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  • Snyk IDSNYK-AMZN2-KERNELTOOLS-10264444
  • published30 May 2025
  • disclosed21 May 2024

Introduced: 21 May 2024

CVE-2021-47416  (opens in a new tab)
CWE-401  (opens in a new tab)

How to fix?

Upgrade Amazon-Linux:2 kernel-tools to version 0:4.14.252-195.481.amzn2 or higher.
This issue was patched in ALAS2-2021-1719.

NVD Description

Note: Versions mentioned in the description apply only to the upstream kernel-tools package and not the kernel-tools package as distributed by Amazon-Linux. See How to fix? for Amazon-Linux:2 relevant fixed versions and status.

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

phy: mdio: fix memory leak

Syzbot reported memory leak in MDIO bus interface, the problem was in wrong state logic.

MDIOBUS_ALLOCATED indicates 2 states: 1. Bus is only allocated 2. Bus allocated and __mdiobus_register() fails, but device_register() was called

In case of device_register() has been called we should call put_device() to correctly free the memory allocated for this device, but mdiobus_free() calls just kfree(dev) in case of MDIOBUS_ALLOCATED state

To avoid this behaviour we need to set bus->state to MDIOBUS_UNREGISTERED before calling device_register(), because put_device() should be called even in case of device_register() failure.

CVSS Base Scores

version 3.1