CVE-2022-49256
kernel: watch_queue: Actually free the watch
Severity
ModerateRed Hat Product Security
CVSS 3.1
Review impact separately from score.
Published · February 26, 2025
Updated · July 22, 2026
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
watch_queue: Actually free the watch
free_watch() does everything barring actually freeing the watch object. Fix this by adding the missing kfree.
kmemleak produces a report something like the following. Note that as an address can be seen in the first word, the watch would appear to have gone through call_rcu().
BUG: memory leak unreferenced object 0xffff88810ce4a200 (size 96): comm "syz-executor352", pid 3605, jiffies 4294947473 (age 13.720s) hex dump (first 32 bytes): e0 82 48 0d 81 88 ff ff 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ..H............. 80 a2 e4 0c 81 88 ff ff 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ backtrace: [<ffffffff8214e6cc>] kmalloc include/linux/slab.h:581 [inline] [<ffffffff8214e6cc>] kzalloc include/linux/slab.h:714 [inline] [<ffffffff8214e6cc>] keyctl_watch_key+0xec/0x2e0 security/keys/keyctl.c:1800 [<ffffffff8214ec84>] __do_sys_keyctl+0x3c4/0x490 security/keys/keyctl.c:2016 [<ffffffff84493a25>] do_syscall_x64 arch/x86/entry/common.c:50 [inline] [<ffffffff84493a25>] do_syscall_64+0x35/0xb0 arch/x86/entry/common.c:80 [<ffffffff84600068>] entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x44/0xae
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-772 · Missing Release of Resource after Effective Lifetime