Cyber Resilience

CVE-2024-56668

Memory Safety in Linux Kernel 6.12 – 6.12.6

Published
27 December 2024
Modified
01 October 2025
Patch / advisory
CVSS Score v3.1 5.5
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
EPSS Score 0.0018 8th percentile
Risk Priority 41 floored blend · peak EPSS

Summary

CVE-2024-56668 is a medium-severity Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime (CWE-401) vulnerability in Linux Linux Kernel. Its CVSS base score is 5.5 (Medium).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Endpoint Denial of Service (T1499); ranked at the 8th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to SA-11 (Developer Testing and Evaluation) and SA-15 (Development Process, Standards, and Tools) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: iommu/vt-d: Fix qi_batch NULL pointer with nested parent domain The qi_batch is allocated when assigning cache tag for a domain. While for nested parent domain, it is missed. Hence, when…

more

trying to map pages to the nested parent, NULL dereference occurred. Also, there is potential memleak since there is no lock around domain->qi_batch allocation. To solve it, add a helper for qi_batch allocation, and call it in both the __cache_tag_assign_domain() and __cache_tag_assign_parent_domain(). BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000200 #PF: supervisor read access in kernel mode #PF: error_code(0x0000) - not-present page PGD 8104795067 P4D 0 Oops: Oops: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP NOPTI CPU: 223 UID: 0 PID: 4357 Comm: qemu-system-x86 Not tainted 6.13.0-rc1-00028-g4b50c3c3b998-dirty #2632 Call Trace: ? __die+0x24/0x70 ? page_fault_oops+0x80/0x150 ? do_user_addr_fault+0x63/0x7b0 ? exc_page_fault+0x7c/0x220 ? asm_exc_page_fault+0x26/0x30 ? cache_tag_flush_range_np+0x13c/0x260 intel_iommu_iotlb_sync_map+0x1a/0x30 iommu_map+0x61/0xf0 batch_to_domain+0x188/0x250 iopt_area_fill_domains+0x125/0x320 ? rcu_is_watching+0x11/0x50 iopt_map_pages+0x63/0x100 iopt_map_common.isra.0+0xa7/0x190 iopt_map_user_pages+0x6a/0x80 iommufd_ioas_map+0xcd/0x1d0 iommufd_fops_ioctl+0x118/0x1c0 __x64_sys_ioctl+0x93/0xc0 do_syscall_64+0x71/0x140 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x76/0x7e

CWE(s)

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques

T1499 Endpoint Denial of Service Impact
Adversaries may perform Endpoint Denial of Service (DoS) attacks to degrade or block the availability of services to users.
T1499.003 Application Exhaustion Flood Impact
Adversaries may target resource intensive features of applications to cause a denial of service (DoS), denying availability to those applications.
T1499.004 Application or System Exploitation Impact
Adversaries may exploit software vulnerabilities that can cause an application or system to crash and deny availability to users.
T1489 Service Stop Impact
Adversaries may stop or disable services on a system to render those services unavailable to legitimate users.
Derived from this CVE’s CWE(s) via the direct CWE→ATT&CK cross-walk.

CVEs Like This One

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CVE-2026-43124Same product: Linux Linux Kernel
CVE-2024-50056Same product: Linux Linux Kernel
CVE-2024-56579Same product: Linux Linux Kernel
CVE-2025-38149Same product: Linux Linux Kernel
CVE-2025-22007Same product: Linux Linux Kernel
CVE-2024-38559Same product: Linux Linux Kernel

Affected Assets

linux
linux kernel
6.13 · 6.12 — 6.12.6

Mitigating Controls

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

Developer testing and evaluation (static analysis, fuzzing, or runtime leak detection) directly finds missing deallocation.

Requiring documented development standards and tools can mandate memory-management disciplines that avoid leaks at introduction.

Engineering principles applied during development can require explicit resource-release patterns that stop memory leaks from being coded.

Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

PR.PS-06 mostly match
prevents

Secure SDLC practices directly enforce proper memory allocation/deallocation via coding standards, reviews, and tooling.

Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

finds

Security testing in development can detect unreleased memory, providing partial coverage of the weakness.

prevents

Secure development life cycle mandates memory-management practices that reduce missing-release defects.

prevents

Application security requirements can specify explicit memory-release rules, partially mitigating the weakness.

prevents

Secure system architecture and engineering principles include resource-management guidelines that address memory leaks.

prevents

Secure coding standards directly require proper allocation/deallocation, covering most of this weakness.

finds

Capacity management may detect memory exhaustion symptoms but does not prevent the coding flaw.

References