One Simple API Can Cause Hundreds of Bugs An Analysis of Refcounting Bugs in All Modern Linux Kernels

Reference counting (refcounting) is widely used in Linux kernel. However, it requires manual operations on the related APIs. In practice, missing or improperly invoking these APIs has introduced too many bugs, known as refcounting bugs. To evaluate the severity of these bugs in history and in future, this paper presents a comprehensive study on them.