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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2022-48809 json

net: fix a memleak when uncloning an skb dst and its metadata

published 2024-07-16 2 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2022-53688

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 21%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

net: fix a memleak when uncloning an skb dst and its metadata

When uncloning an skb dst and its associated metadata, a new dst+metadata is allocated and later replaces the old one in the skb. This is helpful to have a non-shared dst+metadata attached to a specific skb.

The issue is the uncloned dst+metadata is initialized with a refcount of 1, which is increased to 2 before attaching it to the skb. When tun_dst_unclone returns, the dst+metadata is only referenced from a single place (the skb) while its refcount is 2. Its refcount will never drop to 0 (when the skb is consumed), leading to a memory leak.

Fix this by removing the call to dst_hold in tun_dst_unclone, as the dst+metadata refcount is already 1.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 4.9.302, 4.14.267, 4.19.230, 5.4.180, 5.10.101, 5.15.24, 5.16.10, 5.17
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 5.16.10-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2022-48809

  • linux Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 4.15.0-177.186
  • linux Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-110.124
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 4.15.0-1128.137
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1073.78
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1073.78
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1021.23
  • linux-iot Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1004.6
  • linux-kvm Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 4.15.0-1114.117

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2022-48809

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-azure SLE Module for Public Cloud 15 SP5, openSUSE Leap 15.5 5.14.21-150500.33.63.1
  • kernel-syms-azure SLE Module for Public Cloud 15 SP5, openSUSE Leap 15.5 5.14.21-150500.33.63.1
  • kernel-source-azure SLE Module for Public Cloud 15 SP5, openSUSE Leap 15.5 5.14.21-150500.33.63.1
  • dtb-aarch64 openSUSE Leap 15.5 5.14.21-150500.55.73.1
  • kernel-64kb SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP5, openSUSE Leap 15.5 5.14.21-150500.55.73.1
  • kernel-syms SLE Module for Development Tools 15 SP5, openSUSE Leap 15.5 5.14.21-150500.55.73.1
  • kernel-obs-qa openSUSE Leap 15.5 5.14.21-150500.55.73.1
  • kernel-source SLE Module for Development Tools 15 SP5, SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP5, openSUSE Leap 15.5 5.14.21-150500.55.73.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2025:0034-1SUSE-SU-2024:4100-1SUSE-SU-2024:2947-1SUSE-SU-2024:2939-1SUSE-SU-2024:2894-1

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-2022-48809 updated cvss 6.1

kernel: net: fix a memleak when uncloning an skb dst and its metadata

  • 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
    affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”

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

0.28% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 21% 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.