ACPICA: fix acpi parse and parseext cache leaks
CVE: CVE-2025-38344
Component: kernel
CWE: CWE-772
Severity: Moderate
CVSS v3: 5.6/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Release date: 2025-07-10T00:00:00+00:00

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

ACPICA: fix acpi parse and parseext cache leaks

ACPICA commit 8829e70e1360c81e7a5a901b5d4f48330e021ea5

I'm Seunghun Han, and I work for National Security Research Institute of
South Korea.

I have been doing a research on ACPI and found an ACPI cache leak in ACPI
early abort cases.

Boot log of ACPI cache leak is as follows:
[    0.352414] ACPI: Added _OSI(Module Device)
[    0.353182] ACPI: Added _OSI(Processor Device)
[    0.353182] ACPI: Added _OSI(3.0 _SCP Extensions)
[    0.353182] ACPI: Added _OSI(Processor Aggregator Device)
[    0.356028] ACPI: Unable to start the ACPI Interpreter
[    0.356799] ACPI Error: Could not remove SCI handler (20170303/evmisc-281)
[    0.360215] kmem_cache_destroy Acpi-State: Slab cache still has objects
[    0.360648] CPU: 0 PID: 1 Comm: swapper/0 Tainted: G        W
4.12.0-rc4-next-20170608+ #10
[    0.361273] Hardware name: innotek gmb_h virtual_box/virtual_box, BIOS
virtual_box 12/01/2006
[    0.361873] Call Trace:
[    0.362243]  ? dump_stack+0x5c/0x81
[    0.362591]  ? kmem_cache_destroy+0x1aa/0x1c0
[    0.362944]  ? acpi_sleep_proc_init+0x27/0x27
[    0.363296]  ? acpi_os_delete_cache+0xa/0x10
[    0.363646]  ? acpi_ut_delete_caches+0x6d/0x7b
[    0.364000]  ? acpi_terminate+0xa/0x14
[    0.364000]  ? acpi_init+0x2af/0x34f
[    0.364000]  ? __class_create+0x4c/0x80
[    0.364000]  ? video_setup+0x7f/0x7f
[    0.364000]  ? acpi_sleep_proc_init+0x27/0x27
[    0.364000]  ? do_one_initcall+0x4e/0x1a0
[    0.364000]  ? kernel_init_freeable+0x189/0x20a
[    0.364000]  ? rest_init+0xc0/0xc0
[    0.364000]  ? kernel_init+0xa/0x100
[    0.364000]  ? ret_from_fork+0x25/0x30

I analyzed this memory leak in detail. I found that “Acpi-State” cache and
“Acpi-Parse” cache were merged because the size of cache objects was same
slab cache size.

I finally found “Acpi-Parse” cache and “Acpi-parse_ext” cache were leaked
using SLAB_NEVER_MERGE flag in kmem_cache_create() function.

Real ACPI cache leak point is as follows:
[    0.360101] ACPI: Added _OSI(Module Device)
[    0.360101] ACPI: Added _OSI(Processor Device)
[    0.360101] ACPI: Added _OSI(3.0 _SCP Extensions)
[    0.361043] ACPI: Added _OSI(Processor Aggregator Device)
[    0.364016] ACPI: Unable to start the ACPI Interpreter
[    0.365061] ACPI Error: Could not remove SCI handler (20170303/evmisc-281)
[    0.368174] kmem_cache_destroy Acpi-Parse: Slab cache still has objects
[    0.369332] CPU: 1 PID: 1 Comm: swapper/0 Tainted: G        W
4.12.0-rc4-next-20170608+ #8
[    0.371256] Hardware name: innotek gmb_h virtual_box/virtual_box, BIOS
virtual_box 12/01/2006
[    0.372000] Call Trace:
[    0.372000]  ? dump_stack+0x5c/0x81
[    0.372000]  ? kmem_cache_destroy+0x1aa/0x1c0
[    0.372000]  ? acpi_sleep_proc_init+0x27/0x27
[    0.372000]  ? acpi_os_delete_cache+0xa/0x10
[    0.372000]  ? acpi_ut_delete_caches+0x56/0x7b
[    0.372000]  ? acpi_terminate+0xa/0x14
[    0.372000]  ? acpi_init+0x2af/0x34f
[    0.372000]  ? __class_create+0x4c/0x80
[    0.372000]  ? video_setup+0x7f/0x7f
[    0.372000]  ? acpi_sleep_proc_init+0x27/0x27
[    0.372000]  ? do_one_initcall+0x4e/0x1a0
[    0.372000]  ? kernel_init_freeable+0x189/0x20a
[    0.372000]  ? rest_init+0xc0/0xc0
[    0.372000]  ? kernel_init+0xa/0x100
[    0.372000]  ? ret_from_fork+0x25/0x30
[    0.388039] kmem_cache_destroy Acpi-parse_ext: Slab cache still has objects
[    0.389063] CPU: 1 PID: 1 Comm: swapper/0 Tainted: G        W
4.12.0-rc4-next-20170608+ #8
[    0.390557] Hardware name: innotek gmb_h virtual_box/virtual_box, BIOS
virtual_box 12/01/2006
[    0.392000] Call Trace:
[    0.392000]  ? dump_stack+0x5c/0x81
[    0.392000]  ? kmem_cache_destroy+0x1aa/0x1c0
[    0.392000]  ? acpi_sleep_proc_init+0x27/0x27
[    0.392000]  ? acpi_os_delete_cache+0xa/0x10
[    0.392000]  ? acpi_ut_delete_caches+0x6d/0x7b
[    0.392000]  ? acpi_terminate+0xa/0x14
[    0.392000]  ? acpi_init+0x2af/0x3
---truncated---


Remediation: