Service interruption via leaked USDT register allocations
Published Oct 17, 2022 · Updated Apr 15, 2025
Memory leak in the libbpf USDT parser bundled with Linux Kernel allows attackers to exhaust process memory via crafted arm64 arguments. On arm64, parse_usdt_arg uses an allocating sscanf conversion that can allocate reg_name after two conversions, then overwrites the pointer during fallback parsing without freeing it. Reachability requires a libbpf consumer to parse repeated crafted USDT argument specifications; the bounded consequence is process-memory exhaustion and service interruption.
Summary
What happened
Memory leak in the libbpf USDT parser bundled with Linux Kernel allows attackers to exhaust process memory via crafted arm64 arguments. On arm64, parse_usdt_arg uses an allocating sscanf conversion that can allocate reg_name after two conversions, then overwrites the pointer during fallback parsing without freeing it. Reachability requires a libbpf consumer to parse repeated crafted USDT argument specifications; the bounded consequence is process-memory exhaustion and service interruption.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2022-3533
- Published
- Oct 17, 2022
- Updated
- Apr 15, 2025
- Vendor
- The Linux Kernel Organization
- Product
- Linux Kernel
- Classifications
- CWE-404, T1499
- Attack vector
- adjacent
- Privileges
- authenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Oct 17, 2022CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Apr 15, 2025Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
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- Affected versionversion=n/a
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
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Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
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Your stack
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