Summaryinfo

A vulnerability was found in Linux Kernel up to 6.0.17/6.1.3. It has been declared as critical. This affects the function elf_kexec_load of the component RISC-V. Such manipulation leads to memory leak. This vulnerability is documented as CVE-2022-50631. There is not any exploit available. It is recommended to upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in Linux Kernel up to 6.0.17/6.1.3 and classified as critical. Affected by this issue is the function elf_kexec_load of the component RISC-V. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a memory leak vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-401. The product does not sufficiently track and release allocated memory after it has been used, which slowly consumes remaining memory. Impacted is availability. CVE summarizes:

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: RISC-V: kexec: Fix memory leak of fdt buffer This is reported by kmemleak detector: unreferenced object 0xff60000082864000 (size 9588): comm "kexec", pid 146, jiffies 4294900634 (age 64.788s) hex dump (first 32 bytes): d0 0d fe ed 00 00 12 ed 00 00 00 48 00 00 11 40 ...........H...@ 00 00 00 28 00 00 00 11 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 00 ...(............ backtrace: [<00000000f95b17c4>] kmemleak_alloc+0x34/0x3e [<00000000b9ec8e3e>] kmalloc_order+0x9c/0xc4 [<00000000a95cf02e>] kmalloc_order_trace+0x34/0xb6 [<00000000f01e68b4>] __kmalloc+0x5c2/0x62a [<000000002bd497b2>] kvmalloc_node+0x66/0xd6 [<00000000906542fa>] of_kexec_alloc_and_setup_fdt+0xa6/0x6ea [<00000000e1166bde>] elf_kexec_load+0x206/0x4ec [<0000000036548e09>] kexec_image_load_default+0x40/0x4c [<0000000079fbe1b4>] sys_kexec_file_load+0x1c4/0x322 [<0000000040c62c03>] ret_from_syscall+0x0/0x2 In elf_kexec_load(), a buffer is allocated via kvmalloc() to store fdt. While it's not freed back to system when kexec kernel is reloaded or unloaded. Then memory leak is caused. Fix it by introducing riscv specific function arch_kimage_file_post_load_cleanup(), and freeing the buffer there.

The advisory is available at git.kernel.org. This vulnerability is handled as CVE-2022-50631 since 12/09/2025. The exploitation is known to be difficult. Technical details are known, but there is no available exploit.

The vulnerability scanner Nessus provides a plugin with the ID 278316 (Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2022-50631), which helps to determine the existence of the flaw in a target environment.

Upgrading to version 6.0.18 or 6.1.4 eliminates this vulnerability. Applying the patch c66ad198b6497dee8f45d7ed5c03629c4525c7d0/dc387c34d8dd10b02a333df098f8fd9bba177a45/96df59b1ae23f5c11698c3c2159aeb2ecd4944a4 is able to eliminate this problem. The bugfix is ready for download at git.kernel.org. The best possible mitigation is suggested to be upgrading to the latest version.

The vulnerability is also documented in the databases at Tenable (278316) and CERT Bund (WID-SEC-2025-2765). If you want to get best quality of vulnerability data, you may have to visit VulDB.

Affected

• Debian Linux
• Amazon Linux 2
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux
• Ubuntu Linux
• SUSE Linux
• Oracle Linux
• SUSE openSUSE
• Open Source Linux Kernel
• RESF Rocky Linux

Productinfo

Type

• Operating System

Vendor

• Linux

Name

• Kernel

Version

• 6.0.0
• 6.0.1
• 6.0.2
• 6.0.3
• 6.0.4
• 6.0.5
• 6.0.6
• 6.0.7
• 6.0.8
• 6.0.9
• 6.0.10
• 6.0.11
• 6.0.12
• 6.0.13
• 6.0.14
• 6.0.15
• 6.0.16
• 6.0.17
• 6.1.0
• 6.1.1
• 6.1.2
• 6.1.3

License

• open-source

Website

• Vendor: https://www.kernel.org/

CPE 2.3info

• 🔒
• 🔒
• 🔒

CPE 2.2info

• 🔒
• 🔒
• 🔒

CVSSv4info

CVSSv3info

CVSSv2info

Exploitinginfo

Threat Intelligenceinfo

Countermeasuresinfo

Timelineinfo

Sourcesinfo

Entryinfo

Discussion