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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2021-47416 json

phy: mdio: fix memory leak

published 2024-05-21 2 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2021-34421

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:

phy: mdio: fix memory leak

Syzbot reported memory leak in MDIO bus interface, the problem was in wrong state logic.

MDIOBUS_ALLOCATED indicates 2 states: 1. Bus is only allocated 2. Bus allocated and __mdiobus_register() fails, but device_register() was called

In case of device_register() has been called we should call put_device() to correctly free the memory allocated for this device, but mdiobus_free() calls just kfree(dev) in case of MDIOBUS_ALLOCATED state

To avoid this behaviour we need to set bus->state to MDIOBUS_UNREGISTERED _before_ calling device_register(), because put_device() should be called even in case of device_register() failure.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 4.4.289, 4.9.287, 4.14.251, 4.19.211, 5.4.153, 5.10.73, 5.14.12, 5.15
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 5.14.12-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2021-47416

  • linux Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 4.15.0-166.174
  • linux Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-92.103
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 4.15.0-1118.125
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1061.64
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1059.63
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1010.11
  • linux-kvm Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 4.15.0-1105.107
  • linux-kvm Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1051.53

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2021-47416

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 SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP5 5.14.21-150500.55.88.1
  • kernel-syms SLE Module for Development Tools 15 SP5 5.14.21-150500.55.88.1
  • kernel-source SLE Module for Development Tools 15 SP5, SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP5 5.14.21-150500.55.88.1
  • kernel-default SLE Module for Legacy 15 SP5, SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP5, SLE Micro 5.5 +2 more 5.14.21-150500.55.88.1
  • kernel-zfcpdump SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP5 5.14.21-150500.55.88.1
  • kernel-obs-build SLE Module for Development Tools 15 SP5 5.14.21-150500.55.88.1
  • kernel-default-base SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP5, SLE Micro 5.5 5.14.21-150500.55.88.1.150500.6.39.4
  • kernel-64kb SLES 15 SP3-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP3-LTSS, Enterprise Storage 7.1 5.3.18-150300.59.182.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2025:0034-1SUSE-SU-2024:4364-1SUSE-SU-2024:4140-1SUSE-SU-2024:4131-1SUSE-SU-2024:4103-1SUSE-SU-2024:4100-1

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-2021-47416 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: phy: mdio: fix memory leak

  • 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 “Fix deferred”
  • 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.