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.
History

Thu, 02 Oct 2025 12:15:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
References
Metrics threat_severity

None

cvssV3_1

{'score': 5.5, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H'}

threat_severity

Moderate


Thu, 02 Oct 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
First Time appeared Linux
Linux linux Kernel
Vendors & Products Linux
Linux linux Kernel

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 12:00:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
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.
Title ARC: mm: fix leakage of memory allocated for PTE
References

cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: Linux

Published:

Updated: 2025-10-01T11:45:20.854Z

Reserved: 2025-09-17T14:53:07.011Z

Link: CVE-2022-50446

cve-icon Vulnrichment

No data.

cve-icon NVD

Status : Awaiting Analysis

Published: 2025-10-01T12:15:37.037

Modified: 2025-10-02T19:12:17.160

Link: CVE-2022-50446

cve-icon Redhat

Severity : Moderate

Publid Date: 2025-10-01T00:00:00Z

Links: CVE-2022-50446 - Bugzilla