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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2021-46968 json

s390/zcrypt: fix zcard and zqueue hot-unplug memleak

published 2024-02-27 2 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2021-33616

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 12%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

s390/zcrypt: fix zcard and zqueue hot-unplug memleak

Tests with kvm and a kmemdebug kernel showed, that on hot unplug the zcard and zqueue structs for the unplugged card or queue are not properly freed because of a mismatch with get/put for the embedded kref counter.

This fix now adjusts the handling of the kref counters. With init the kref counter starts with 1. This initial value needs to drop to zero with the unregister of the card or queue to trigger the release and free the object.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 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-2021-46968

  • kernel-64kb SLES 15 SP3-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP3-LTSS, Enterprise Storage 7.1 5.3.18-150300.59.153.2
  • kernel-syms SLES for SAP 15 SP3, SLES 15 SP3-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP3-LTSS +1 more 5.3.18-150300.59.153.1
  • kernel-source SLES for SAP 15 SP3, SLES 15 SP3-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP3-LTSS +1 more 5.3.18-150300.59.153.2
  • kernel-default SLES for SAP 15 SP3, SLES 15 SP3-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.2 +5 more 5.3.18-150300.59.153.2
  • kernel-preempt SLES for SAP 15 SP3, SLES 15 SP3-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP3-LTSS +1 more 5.3.18-150300.59.153.2
  • kernel-obs-build SLES for SAP 15 SP3, SLES 15 SP3-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP3-LTSS +1 more 5.3.18-150300.59.153.2
  • kernel-default-base SLES for SAP 15 SP3, SLES 15 SP3-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.2 +3 more 5.3.18-150300.59.153.2.150300.18.90.2
  • kernel-rt SLE Micro 5.2, SLE Micro 5.1 5.3.18-150300.161.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2024:0857-1SUSE-SU-2024:0856-1

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-2021-46968 updated cvss 2.3

kernel: s390/zcrypt: fix zcard and zqueue hot-unplug memleak

  • 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

0.22% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 12% 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.