CVE-2021-47416
kernel: phy: mdio: fix memory leak
Severity
LowRed Hat Product Security
CVSS 3.1
Review impact separately from score.
Published · May 21, 2024
Updated · November 21, 2025
Description
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 score applicability
The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.
Mitigation
No mitigation is specified in collected source.
CVSS / CWE
CVSS 3.1 · 5.5CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CWE-401 · Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime