CVE-2021-47119 - CVE House
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Status published Medium CVE-2021-47119

ext4: fix memory leak in ext4_fill_super

Vulnerability Description

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.

Impact Analysis

Refer to official advisory for detailed impact metrics.

Remediation

Ensure systems are updated to the latest vendor-supplied patch levels.

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Credits & Attribution

No credits recorded in the NVD database.

Affected Vendor

Affected Software

Linux
Vulnerable Versions:
ac27a0ec112a089f1a5102bc8dffc79c8c815571, 2.6.19, 0, 5.10.43, 5.12.10, 5.13

Timeline

Official Publish: March 15th, 2024
Last Modified: May 11th, 2026
Added to House: July 21st, 2026

CVSS Vectors

V3: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Weaknesses (CWE)

No CWE data available

MITRE ATT&CK TTPs

No associated TTPs found for this vulnerability.