CVE-2022-48809
kernel: net: fix a memleak when uncloning an skb dst and its metadata
Severity
LowRed Hat Product Security
CVSS 3.1
Review impact separately from score.
Published · July 16, 2024
Updated · November 21, 2025
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
net: fix a memleak when uncloning an skb dst and its metadata
When uncloning an skb dst and its associated metadata, a new dst+metadata is allocated and later replaces the old one in the skb. This is helpful to have a non-shared dst+metadata attached to a specific skb.
The issue is the uncloned dst+metadata is initialized with a refcount of 1, which is increased to 2 before attaching it to the skb. When tun_dst_unclone returns, the dst+metadata is only referenced from a single place (the skb) while its refcount is 2. Its refcount will never drop to 0 (when the skb is consumed), leading to a memory leak.
Fix this by removing the call to dst_hold in tun_dst_unclone, as the dst+metadata refcount is already 1.
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 · 6.1CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:L
CWE-402 · Transmission of Private Resources into a New Sphere ('Resource Leak')