Maniphest T8105

Memory leak in BER decoder tree expansion
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Authored By
• werner
Feb 13 2026, 11:34 AM
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• gniibe
• werner

Description

Reported by: Francisco Tacliad

Severity: Low
CWE: CWE-401 (Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime)
Location: src/asn1-func.c, do_expand_tree(), line 1145
Trigger: Crafted binary input to _ksba_derdn_to_str()

This is a SEPARATE finding from Finding 1, triggered through a
different code path (DER-to-string conversion, not string-to-DER).

When do_expand_tree() processes certain crafted ASN.1 structures,
allocated tree nodes are not freed on the error path. The fuzzer
found one input (starting with "C=" followed by binary data) that
leaks 556 bytes across 10 allocations per invocation.

LeakSanitizer trace:

Indirect leak of 176 byte(s) in 2 object(s) allocated from:
    #0 malloc
    #1 _ksba_malloc        src/util.c:130:10
    #2 _ksba_xmalloc       src/util.c:238:13
    #3 do_expand_tree       src/asn1-func.c:1145:15
    #4 do_expand_tree       src/asn1-func.c:1208:14 (recursive)
    ...
    #8 decoder_init         src/ber-decoder.c:809:13
    #9 create_and_run_decoder  src/dn.c:612:9
    #10 _ksba_derdn_to_str  src/dn.c:639:9

Impact: In a long-running process (gpg-agent, dirmngr), repeated
processing of crafted certificates could gradually exhaust memory.

Reproducer: Available on request (33-byte binary input).

Revisions and Commits

rK libksba
rK86c6e972421a Fix a memory leak in _ksba_ber_decoder_decode.

Related Objects
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StatusAssignedTask
 ResolvedNoneT8104 Heap oob read in libksba's parse_rdn
 ResolvedNoneT8105 Memory leak in BER decoder tree expansion

Event Timeline

• werner triaged this task as Normal priority.Feb 13 2026, 11:34 AM
• werner created this task.
• werner created this object in space Restricted Space.
• werner created this object with edit policy "Contributor (Project)".
• werner updated the task description. (Show Details)
• gniibe added a subscriber: • gniibe.Feb 16 2026, 6:11 AM

I found a possible leak and a possible access of freed memory.

diff --git a/src/ber-decoder.c b/src/ber-decoder.c
index fe8eb87..9adb3c0 100644
--- a/src/ber-decoder.c
+++ b/src/ber-decoder.c
@@ -1328,7 +1328,10 @@ _ksba_ber_decoder_decode (BerDecoder d, const char *start_name,
     err = 0;
 
   if (err)
-    xfree (d->image.buf);
+    {
+      xfree (d->image.buf);
+      d->image.buf = NULL;
+    }
 
   if (r_root && !err)
     {
@@ -1351,6 +1354,11 @@ _ksba_ber_decoder_decode (BerDecoder d, const char *start_name,
           _ksba_asn_node_dump_all (*r_root, stderr);
         }
     }
+  else
+    {
+      _ksba_asn_release_nodes (d->root);
+      d->root = NULL;
+    }
 
   decoder_deinit (d);
   xfree (buf);
• gniibe added a comment.Feb 20 2026, 1:12 AM

Applied the change in: rK86c6e972421a: Fix a memory leak in _ksba_ber_decoder_decode.

• gniibe added a commit: rK86c6e972421a: Fix a memory leak in _ksba_ber_decoder_decode..Feb 20 2026, 1:13 AM
• gniibe mentioned this in Unknown Object (Maniphest Task).Feb 23 2026, 4:04 AM
• werner mentioned this in T7174: Release libksba 1.6.8.Feb 23 2026, 2:33 PM
• werner closed this task as Resolved.Feb 23 2026, 2:49 PM
• werner shifted this object from the Restricted Space space to the S1 Public space.