CVE-2021-47365: linux kernel vulnerability

What is known

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: afs: Fix page leak There's a loop in afs_extend_writeback() that adds extra pages to a write we want to make to improve the efficiency of the writeback by making it larger. This loop stops, however, if we hit a page we can't write back from immediately, but it doesn't get rid of the page ref we speculatively acquired. This was caused by the removal of the cleanup loop when the code switched from using find_get_pages_contig() to xarray scanning as the latter only gets a single page at a time, not a batch. Fix this by putting the page on a ref on an early break from the loop. Unfortunately, we can't just add that page to the pagevec we're employing as we'll go through that and add those pages to the RPC call. This was found by the generic/074 test. It leaks ~4GiB of RAM each time it is run - which can be observed with "top".

Business impact

Successful exploitation of CVE-2021-47365, a medium vulnerability (CVSS 5.5) affecting linux kernel, may affect the confidentiality, integrity or availability of the vulnerable environment. The exact impact depends on the installed version, exposed interfaces and deployment configuration.

Recommended administrator action

Confirm whether linux kernel is present and compare installed versions with the vendor advisory and NVD record. Apply the vendor patch or documented mitigation; until remediation is complete, reduce exposure of affected interfaces, review relevant logs and monitor for indicators of exploitation. DataHouse can support version verification, managed patching, network exposure reduction, log review and backup validation for dedicated, cloud and colocated environments.

Sources

• NVD
• Reference
• Reference