Linux Kernel Out-of-Bounds Message Handling PID Leak Vulnerability

A memory leak vulnerability has been identified in the Linux kernel's handling of out-of-band (OOB) messages via the AF_UNIX socket interface. The issue arises because the 'queue_oob()' function calls 'maybe_add_creds()', which can hold a reference to a process ID (PID). However, the socket's destructor is not properly set, leading to a situation where the PID reference is not released. This vulnerability affects several versions of the Linux kernel.

Impact

Exploitation of this vulnerability leads to a memory leak, where references to process IDs are not properly released, potentially causing unreferenced object leaks.