CVE-2019-3815 systemd: memory leak in journald-server.c introduced by fix for CVE-2018-16864

Solution Verified - Updated -

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
  • systemd

Issue

  • With the newest update on our Openshift Container Platform the process systemd-journald on all types of Nodes (Master-/Infra-/Computing-Nodes) allocate high Memory over time (see RHBZ #1666690)
  • systemd: memory leak in journald-server.c introduced by fix for CVE-2018-16864

Resolution

Update to systemd-219-62.el7_6.3 shipped with 7.6.Z Advisory RHSA-2019:0201 or newer.

Please note that reboot of the system or journald service restart:

systemctl restart systemd-journald.service

is needed to assure the fixed version is running.

Root Cause

A memory leak was discovered in the backport of fixes for CVE-2018-16864 in Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Function dispatch_message_real() in journald-server.c does not free the memory allocated by set_iovec_field_free() to store the _CMDLINE= entry.

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