CVE-2022-49546

MEDIUMNVD 5.55.5—
EchelonGraph scoreMEDIUM confidence

Score 5.5 from GitHub Security Advisory published 2025-03-10. NVD baseline CVSS 5.5; sources differ by 0.0.

Triggered by: GitHub Security Advisory CVSS
Sources: epss, ghsa, nvd
Trending — 3 sources updated this week
5.5
EchelonGraph verdictMonitorLow exploitation likelihood right now — keep watching.
  • Lower severity and no public exploit yet
CISA-KEV: Not listedEPSS: 0%CVSS: 5.5Exploit: NoneExposed: 0

No vendor fix yet — apply a workaround or compensating control (WAF / firewall / segmentation) and watch for a patch.

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

x86/kexec: fix memory leak of elf header buffer

This is reported by kmemleak detector:

unreferenced object 0xffffc900002a9000 (size 4096): comm "kexec", pid 14950, jiffies 4295110793 (age 373.951s) hex dump (first 32 bytes): 7f 45 4c 46 02 01 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 .ELF............ 04 00 3e 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ..>............. backtrace: [<0000000016a8ef9f>] __vmalloc_node_range+0x101/0x170 [<000000002b66b6c0>] __vmalloc_node+0xb4/0x160 [<00000000ad40107d>] crash_prepare_elf64_headers+0x8e/0xcd0 [<0000000019afff23>] crash_load_segments+0x260/0x470 [<0000000019ebe95c>] bzImage64_load+0x814/0xad0 [<0000000093e16b05>] arch_kexec_kernel_image_load+0x1be/0x2a0 [<000000009ef2fc88>] kimage_file_alloc_init+0x2ec/0x5a0 [<0000000038f5a97a>] __do_sys_kexec_file_load+0x28d/0x530 [<0000000087c19992>] do_syscall_64+0x3b/0x90 [<0000000066e063a4>] entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x44/0xae

In crash_prepare_elf64_headers(), a buffer is allocated via vmalloc() to store elf headers. While it's not freed back to system correctly when kdump kernel is reloaded or unloaded. Then memory leak is caused. Fix it by introducing x86 specific function arch_kimage_file_post_load_cleanup(), and freeing the buffer there.

And also remove the incorrect elf header buffer freeing code. Before calling arch specific kexec_file loading function, the image instance has been initialized. So 'image->elf_headers' must be NULL. It doesn't make sense to free the elf header buffer in the place.

Three different people have reported three bugs about the memory leak on x86_64 inside Redhat.

CVSS v3
5.5
EG Score
5.5(medium)
EG Risk
29(Track)
EG Risk 29/100SSVC: Track

EG Risk is EchelonGraph's 0–100 priority score: it fuses intrinsic severity with real-world exploitation and automatability so you can rank equal-severity CVEs and fix the most dangerous first. Higher = act sooner. Distinct from the 0–10 EG Score (severity).

How it’s computed
Severity55% × 45%
Exploitation0% × 40%
Automatability30% × 15%
Action: Routine — remediate on your standard cadence.
EPSS
18.9%
KEV
Not listed

Published

February 26, 2025

Last Modified

November 3, 2025

References (6)

Patch Availability(1)

Vendor / EcosystemFixed in / PatchReleasedSource
linuxKernel @ 5.10.236—osv

Patches are aggregated from vendor advisories (Red Hat, Microsoft, Cisco, GitHub) and package ecosystems (OSV, GHSA). Multiple rows for the same upstream release have been deduplicated.

Weakness Classification(1)

MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration — the root-cause categories this CVE belongs to.

Data Freshness Timeline

(refreshed 15× in last 7d / 46× in last 30d)

Each row is a source pipeline that fetched or updated this CVE on that date, with what changed. For example, "NVD update" means NVD published or revised its analysis for this CVE; "MITRE cvelistV5" means we ingested or refreshed it from the CNA feed. Most recent first.

  1. 2026-07-24 14:15 UTCEPSS rescore
  2. 2026-07-24 14:11 UTCOSV refresh
  3. 2026-07-23 14:16 UTCEPSS rescore
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  6. 2026-07-07 09:21 UTCOSV refresh
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  67. 2026-05-30 10:49 UTCGHSA enrichment
  68. 2026-05-30 10:05 UTCOSV refresh
  69. 2026-05-29 13:43 UTCEPSS rescore

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Frequently asked(5)

What is CVE-2022-49546?
CVE-2022-49546 is a medium vulnerability published on February 26, 2025. In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: x86/kexec: fix memory leak of elf header buffer This is reported by kmemleak detector: unreferenced object 0xffffc900002a9000 (size 4096): comm "kexec", pid 14950, jiffies 4295110793 (age 373.951s) hex dump (first 32 bytes): 7f 45…
When was CVE-2022-49546 disclosed?
CVE-2022-49546 was first published in the National Vulnerability Database on February 26, 2025, with the most recent update on November 3, 2025. EchelonGraph re-ingests CVE updates from NVD on a 2-hour cycle, so this page reflects the latest published state.
Is CVE-2022-49546 actively exploited?
CVE-2022-49546 is not currently on CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. FIRST EPSS estimates a 18.9% percentile likelihood of exploitation in the next 30 days — higher percentiles indicate greater predicted risk.
What is the CVSS score of CVE-2022-49546?
CVE-2022-49546 has a CVSS v3 base score of 5.5 (NVD).
How do I remediate CVE-2022-49546?
Patch to the fixed version published by the affected vendor. Where vendor advisories exist for CVE-2022-49546, EchelonGraph cross-links them in the Vendor Advisories panel below — those typically contain the canonical remediation steps, fixed version numbers, and any vendor-specific mitigations.

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