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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2021-47024 json

vsock/virtio: free queued packets when closing socket

published 2024-02-28 2 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2021-33672

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.3%
EPSS 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 16%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

vsock/virtio: free queued packets when closing socket

As reported by syzbot [1], there is a memory leak while closing the socket. We partially solved this issue with commit ac03046ece2b ("vsock/virtio: free packets during the socket release"), but we forgot to drain the RX queue when the socket is definitely closed by the scheduled work.

To avoid future issues, let's use the new virtio_transport_remove_sock() to drain the RX queue before removing the socket from the af_vsock lists calling vsock_remove_sock().

[1] https://syzkaller.appspot.com/bug?extid=24452624fc4c571eedd9

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 4.10, 4.15, 4.20, 5.1, 5.2, 5.10.37, 5.11.21, 5.12.4, 5.13
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 5.10.38-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2021-47024

  • kernel-syms SLES for SAP 12 SP5, SLES 12 SP5 4.12.14-122.216.1
  • kernel-source SLES for SAP 12 SP5, SLES 12 SP5 4.12.14-122.216.1
  • kernel-default SLES for SAP 12 SP5, SLES 12 SP5, SLE Workstation Extension 12 SP5 +2 more 4.12.14-122.216.1
  • kernel-obs-build SLE Software Development Kit 12 SP5 4.12.14-122.216.1
  • kernel-rt SLE Real Time 12 SP5 4.12.14-10.182.1
  • kernel-syms-rt SLE Real Time 12 SP5 4.12.14-10.182.1
  • kernel-rt_debug SLE Real Time 12 SP5 4.12.14-10.182.1
  • kernel-source-rt SLE Real Time 12 SP5 4.12.14-10.182.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2024:1870-1SUSE-SU-2024:1646-1SUSE-SU-2024:1643-1

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-2021-47024 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: vsock/virtio: free queued packets when closing socket

  • 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
    affected: no fix available
  • 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

0.25% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 16% 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.