CVE-2022-50446

ARC: mm: fix leakage of memory allocated for PTE

MEDIUM
5.5
CVSS Score
Published: October 1, 2025 at 11:45 AM UTC
Updated: June 17, 2026 at 05:23 AM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorLinux Kernel

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Severity
MEDIUM5.5
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.2%

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ARC: mm: fix leakage of memory allocated for PTE Since commit d9820ff ("ARC: mm: switch pgtable_t back to struct page *") a memory leakage problem occurs. Memory allocated for page table entries not released during process termination. This issue can be reproduced by a small program that allocates a large amount of memory. After several runs, you'll see that the amount of free memory has reduced and will continue to reduce after each run. All ARC CPUs are effected by this issue. The issue was introduced since the kernel stable release v5.15-rc1. As described in commit d9820ff after switch pgtable_t back to struct page *, a pointer to "struct page" and appropriate functions are used to allocate and free a memory page for PTEs, but the pmd_pgtable macro hasn't changed and returns the direct virtual address from the PMD (PGD) entry. Than this address used as a parameter in the __pte_free() and as a result this function couldn't release memory page allocated for PTEs. Fix this issue by changing the pmd_pgtable macro and returning pointer to struct page.

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

5.15 ≤ v < 5.15.775.15 ≤ v < 6.0.75.15 ≤ v < 6.15.16 ≤ v < 6.0.75.156.1 rc16.1 rc2d9820ff76f95fa26d33e412254a89cd65b23142d
Vendor states this is fixed in 14009ada5712649589ab4ad0441b811780ea8773 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in 4fd9df10cb7a9289fbd22d669f9f98164d95a1ce (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in d83a69966e8b6ae9dd447f3ac704c0223bceb7f7 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in 5.15 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 5.15.77 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 6.0.7 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 6.1 (unaffected)

CVSS

Attack Vector
LOCAL
Complexity
LOW
Privileges
LOW
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
NONE
Integrity
NONE
Availability
HIGH
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusANALYZED
CWE
CWE-401

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