Vulnerability Database

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Total vulnerabilities in the database

CVE-2023-53468 — linux / linux_kernel

Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime

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

ubifs: Fix memory leak in alloc_wbufs()

kmemleak reported a sequence of memory leaks, and show them as following:

unreferenced object 0xffff8881575f8400 (size 1024): comm "mount", pid 19625, jiffies 4297119604 (age 20.383s) hex dump (first 32 bytes): 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ backtrace: [<ffffffff8176cecd>] __kmalloc+0x4d/0x150 [<ffffffffa0406b2b>] ubifs_mount+0x307b/0x7170 [ubifs] [<ffffffff819fa8fd>] legacy_get_tree+0xed/0x1d0 [<ffffffff81936f2d>] vfs_get_tree+0x7d/0x230 [<ffffffff819b2bd4>] path_mount+0xdd4/0x17b0 [<ffffffff819b37aa>] __x64_sys_mount+0x1fa/0x270 [<ffffffff83c14295>] do_syscall_64+0x35/0x80 [<ffffffff83e0006a>] entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x46/0xb0

unreferenced object 0xffff8881798a6e00 (size 512): comm "mount", pid 19677, jiffies 4297121912 (age 37.816s) hex dump (first 32 bytes): 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk backtrace: [<ffffffff8176cecd>] __kmalloc+0x4d/0x150 [<ffffffffa0418342>] ubifs_wbuf_init+0x52/0x480 [ubifs] [<ffffffffa0406ca5>] ubifs_mount+0x31f5/0x7170 [ubifs] [<ffffffff819fa8fd>] legacy_get_tree+0xed/0x1d0 [<ffffffff81936f2d>] vfs_get_tree+0x7d/0x230 [<ffffffff819b2bd4>] path_mount+0xdd4/0x17b0 [<ffffffff819b37aa>] __x64_sys_mount+0x1fa/0x270 [<ffffffff83c14295>] do_syscall_64+0x35/0x80 [<ffffffff83e0006a>] entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x46/0xb0

The problem is that the ubifs_wbuf_init() returns an error in the loop which in the alloc_wbufs(), then the wbuf->buf and wbuf->inodes that were successfully alloced before are not freed.

Fix it by adding error hanging path in alloc_wbufs() which frees the memory alloced before when ubifs_wbuf_init() returns an error.

  • Published: Oct 1, 2025
  • Updated: Jan 21, 2026
  • CVE: CVE-2023-53468
  • Severity: Medium
  • Exploit:
  • CISA KEV:

CVSS v3:

  • Severity: Medium
  • Score: 5.5
  • AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

CWEs:

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