vulnerability
Red Hat: CVE-2023-53221: kernel: bpf: Fix memleak due to fentry attach failure (Multiple Advisories)
| Severity | CVSS | Published | Added | Modified |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | (AV:L/AC:L/Au:S/C:N/I:N/A:C) | Sep 15, 2025 | Nov 14, 2025 | Dec 4, 2025 |
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
bpf: Fix memleak due to fentry attach failure
If it fails to attach fentry, the allocated bpf trampoline image will be
left in the system. That can be verified by checking /proc/kallsyms.
This meamleak can be verified by a simple bpf program as follows:
SEC("fentry/trap_init")
int fentry_run()
{
return 0;
}
It will fail to attach trap_init because this function is freed after
kernel init, and then we can find the trampoline image is left in the
system by checking /proc/kallsyms.
$ tail /proc/kallsyms
ffffffffc0613000 t bpf_trampoline_6442453466_1 [bpf]
ffffffffc06c3000 t bpf_trampoline_6442453466_1 [bpf]
$ bpftool btf dump file /sys/kernel/btf/vmlinux | grep "FUNC 'trap_init'"
[2522] FUNC 'trap_init' type_id=119 linkage=static
$ echo $((6442453466 & 0x7fffffff))
2522
Note that there are two left bpf trampoline images, that is because the
libbpf will fallback to raw tracepoint if -EINVAL is returned.
Solutions
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