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Unrated severityNVD Advisory· Published Jul 29, 2024· Updated May 4, 2025

sched/deadline: Fix task_struct reference leak

CVE-2024-41023

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

sched/deadline: Fix task_struct reference leak

During the execution of the following stress test with linux-rt:

stress-ng --cyclic 30 --timeout 30 --minimize --quiet

kmemleak frequently reported a memory leak concerning the task_struct:

unreferenced object 0xffff8881305b8000 (size 16136): comm "stress-ng", pid 614, jiffies 4294883961 (age 286.412s) object hex dump (first 32 bytes): 02 40 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 .@.............. 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ debug hex dump (first 16 bytes): 53 09 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 S............... backtrace: [<00000000046b6790>] dup_task_struct+0x30/0x540 [<00000000c5ca0f0b>] copy_process+0x3d9/0x50e0 [<00000000ced59777>] kernel_clone+0xb0/0x770 [<00000000a50befdc>] __do_sys_clone+0xb6/0xf0 [<000000001dbf2008>] do_syscall_64+0x5d/0xf0 [<00000000552900ff>] entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x6e/0x76

The issue occurs in start_dl_timer(), which increments the task_struct reference count and sets a timer. The timer callback, dl_task_timer, is supposed to decrement the reference count upon expiration. However, if enqueue_task_dl() is called before the timer expires and cancels it, the reference count is not decremented, leading to the leak.

This patch fixes the reference leak by ensuring the task_struct reference count is properly decremented when the timer is canceled.

Affected products

120

Patches

2
b58652db66c9
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.gitvia osv
commit
7a54d31face6
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.gitvia osv
commit

Vulnerability mechanics

Generated on May 9, 2026. Inputs: CWE entries + fix-commit diffs from this CVE's patches. Citations validated against bundle.

References

2

News mentions

0

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