In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been...
Moderate severity
Unreviewed
Published
Mar 15, 2024
to the GitHub Advisory Database
•
Updated Jan 7, 2025
Description
Published by the National Vulnerability Database
Mar 15, 2024
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database
Mar 15, 2024
Last updated
Jan 7, 2025
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
ext4: fix memory leak in ext4_fill_super
Buffer head references must be released before calling kill_bdev();
otherwise the buffer head (and its page referenced by b_data) will not
be freed by kill_bdev, and subsequently that bh will be leaked.
If blocksizes differ, sb_set_blocksize() will kill current buffers and
page cache by using kill_bdev(). And then super block will be reread
again but using correct blocksize this time. sb_set_blocksize() didn't
fully free superblock page and buffer head, and being busy, they were
not freed and instead leaked.
This can easily be reproduced by calling an infinite loop of:
systemctl start <ext4_on_lvm>.mount, and
systemctl stop <ext4_on_lvm>.mount
... since systemd creates a cgroup for each slice which it mounts, and
the bh leak get amplified by a dying memory cgroup that also never
gets freed, and memory consumption is much more easily noticed.
References