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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2021-46956 json

virtiofs: fix memory leak in virtio_fs_probe()

published 2024-02-27 2 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2021-33604

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 14%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

virtiofs: fix memory leak in virtio_fs_probe()

When accidentally passing twice the same tag to qemu, kmemleak ended up reporting a memory leak in virtiofs. Also, looking at the log I saw the following error (that's when I realised the duplicated tag):

virtiofs: probe of virtio5 failed with error -17

Here's the kmemleak log for reference:

unreferenced object 0xffff888103d47800 (size 1024): comm "systemd-udevd", pid 118, jiffies 4294893780 (age 18.340s) hex dump (first 32 bytes): 00 00 00 00 ad 4e ad de ff ff ff ff 00 00 00 00 .....N.......... ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff 80 90 02 a0 ff ff ff ff ................ backtrace: [<000000000ebb87c1>] virtio_fs_probe+0x171/0x7ae [virtiofs] [<00000000f8aca419>] virtio_dev_probe+0x15f/0x210 [<000000004d6baf3c>] really_probe+0xea/0x430 [<00000000a6ceeac8>] device_driver_attach+0xa8/0xb0 [<00000000196f47a7>] __driver_attach+0x98/0x140 [<000000000b20601d>] bus_for_each_dev+0x7b/0xc0 [<00000000399c7b7f>] bus_add_driver+0x11b/0x1f0 [<0000000032b09ba7>] driver_register+0x8f/0xe0 [<00000000cdd55998>] 0xffffffffa002c013 [<000000000ea196a2>] do_one_initcall+0x64/0x2e0 [<0000000008f727ce>] do_init_module+0x5c/0x260 [<000000003cdedab6>] __do_sys_finit_module+0xb5/0x120 [<00000000ad2f48c6>] do_syscall_64+0x33/0x40 [<00000000809526b5>] entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x44/0xae

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 5.4.118, 5.10.36, 5.11.20, 5.12.3, 5.13
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 5.10.38-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2021-46956

  • linux Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-77.86
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1051.53
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1046.49
  • linux-kvm Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1041.42
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1051.53
  • linux-gkeop Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1018.19
  • linux-raspi Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1038.41
  • linux-oracle Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1048.52

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2021-46956

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • kernel-64kb SLES 15 SP3-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP3-LTSS, Enterprise Storage 7.1 5.3.18-150300.59.158.1
  • kernel-syms SLES for SAP 15 SP3, SLES 15 SP3-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP3-LTSS +1 more 5.3.18-150300.59.158.1
  • kernel-source SLES for SAP 15 SP3, SLES 15 SP3-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP3-LTSS +1 more 5.3.18-150300.59.158.1
  • kernel-default SLES for SAP 15 SP3, SLES 15 SP3-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.2 +5 more 5.3.18-150300.59.158.1
  • kernel-preempt SLES for SAP 15 SP3, SLES 15 SP3-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP3-LTSS +1 more 5.3.18-150300.59.158.1
  • kernel-obs-build SLES for SAP 15 SP3, SLES 15 SP3-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP3-LTSS +1 more 5.3.18-150300.59.158.1
  • kernel-default-base SLES for SAP 15 SP3, SLES 15 SP3-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.2 +3 more 5.3.18-150300.59.158.1.150300.18.92.5
  • kernel-rt SLE Micro 5.2, SLE Micro 5.1 5.3.18-150300.166.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2024:1489-1SUSE-SU-2024:1465-1

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2021-46956 updated cvss 4.7

kernel: virtiofs: fix memory leak in virtio_fs_probe()

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
2 y ago

Exploit prediction

0.23% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 14% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-401 Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime
Technology feeds

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.