CVE-2021-47527 - CVE House
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Status published Medium CVE-2021-47527

serial: core: fix transmit-buffer reset and memleak

Vulnerability Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: serial: core: fix transmit-buffer reset and memleak Commit 761ed4a94582 ("tty: serial_core: convert uart_close to use tty_port_close") converted serial core to use tty_port_close() but failed to notice that the transmit buffer still needs to be freed on final close. Not freeing the transmit buffer means that the buffer is no longer cleared on next open so that any ioctl() waiting for the buffer to drain might wait indefinitely (e.g. on termios changes) or that stale data can end up being transmitted in case tx is restarted. Furthermore, the buffer of any port that has been opened would leak on driver unbind. Note that the port lock is held when clearing the buffer pointer due to the ldisc race worked around by commit a5ba1d95e46e ("uart: fix race between uart_put_char() and uart_shutdown()"). Also note that the tty-port shutdown() callback is not called for console ports so it is not strictly necessary to free the buffer page after releasing the lock (cf. d72402145ace ("tty/serial: do not free trasnmit buffer page under port lock")).

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:
761ed4a94582ab291aa24dcbea4e01e8936488c8, 4.9, 0, 4.9.292, 4.14.257, 4.19.220, 5.4.164, 5.10.84, 5.15.7, 5.16

Timeline

Official Publish: May 24th, 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.