CVE-2023-54020

dmaengine: sf-pdma: pdma_desc memory leak fix

published December 24, 2025

CVSS
—
EPSS
0%
Percentile
8.7
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

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

dmaengine: sf-pdma: pdma_desc memory leak fix

Commit b2cc5c465c2c ("dmaengine: sf-pdma: Add multithread support for a

DMA channel") changed sf_pdma_prep_dma_memcpy() to unconditionally

allocate a new sf_pdma_desc each time it is called.

The driver previously recycled descs, by checking the in_use flag, only

allocating additional descs if the existing one was in use. This logic

was removed in commit b2cc5c465c2c ("dmaengine: sf-pdma: Add multithread

support for a DMA channel"), but sf_pdma_free_desc() was not changed to

handle the new behaviour.

As a result, each time sf_pdma_prep_dma_memcpy() is called, the previous

descriptor is leaked, over time leading to memory starvation:

unreferenced object 0xffffffe008447300 (size 192):

comm "irq/39-mchp_dsc", pid 343, jiffies 4294906910 (age 981.200s)

hex dump (first 32 bytes):

00 00 00 ff 00 00 00 00 b8 c1 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................

00 00 70 08 10 00 00 00 00 00 00 c0 00 00 00 00 ..p.............

backtrace:

[<00000000064a04f4>] kmemleak_alloc+0x1e/0x28

[<00000000018927a7>] kmem_cache_alloc+0x11e/0x178

[<000000002aea8d16>] sf_pdma_prep_dma_memcpy+0x40/0x112

Add the missing kfree() to sf_pdma_free_desc(), and remove the redundant

in_use flag.

The record
Technical detail
CVSS
Not scored
CVSS v4.0
Not supplied
EPSS
0.00195 · 8.7th percentile
Published
2025-12-24T10:55Z
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 24 DEC 10:55Z
    dmaengine: sf-pdma: pdma_desc memory leak fix
    cvelistv5