high CVSS 7.1

CVE-2023-52501·Kernel vulnerability

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ring-buffer: Do not attempt to read past "commit" When iterating over the ring buffer while the ring buffer is active, the writer can corrupt the reader. There's barriers to help detect this and handle it, but that code missed the case where the last event was at the very end of the page and has only 4 bytes left. The checks to detect the corruption by the writer to reads needs to see the length of the event. If the length in the first 4 bytes is zero then the length is stored in the second 4 bytes. But if the writer is in the process of updating that code, there's a small window where the length in the first 4 bytes could be zero even though the length is only 4 bytes. That will cause rb_event_length() to read the next 4 bytes which could happen to be off the allocated page. To protect against this, fail immediately if the next event pointer is less than 8 bytes from the end of the commit (last byte of data), as all events must be a minimum of 8 bytes anyway.

Severity
high
Software
Kernel
Fixed in
5.15.134
Published
2024-03-02

Affected versions

From: 6.2

Until: 6.5.6

Fixed in: 5.15.134

How to fix this CVE

Update the Linux kernel to version 5.15.134 or later to resolve a ring buffer memory access vulnerability that can cause data corruption when the buffer is actively written to by concurrent processes. Systems running kernel versions 6.2 through 6.5.6 should prioritize this update as they contain the defective code. After patching, reboot the system to load the fixed kernel.

sudo dnf update kernel kernel-devel && sudo reboot

Defensia detects this vulnerability

How to check if you are affected

  1. Check your current kernel version: uname -r
  2. Compare against vulnerable range (6.2.x to 6.5.6); if in range or between 5.15.x and 5.15.133, system is vulnerable
  3. Monitor dmesg and /var/log/kern.log for messages containing 'ring buffer' or 'corruption' warnings that may indicate attempted exploitation
  4. After applying the patch, verify the new kernel is loaded: uname -r should show version 5.15.134 or later, and confirm reboot completed successfully

FAQ

What is CVE-2023-52501?

CVE-2023-52501 is a kernel ring buffer vulnerability where concurrent read and write operations can cause memory access violations. When a write operation updates the ring buffer near a page boundary, a reader thread may attempt to access memory beyond the allocated buffer if event length metadata is being updated, leading to potential data corruption or system instability.

Is CVE-2023-52501 being actively exploited?

No. CVE-2023-52501 is not listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog and no public exploits are available. This is primarily a stability and data integrity issue rather than a remotely exploitable security flaw.

What versions of Kernel are affected by CVE-2023-52501?

Linux kernel versions 6.2.x through 6.5.6 are affected. Additionally, stable branch versions 5.15.x up to 5.15.133 contain the vulnerable code. Version 5.15.134 and later stable releases contain the fix.

How do I check if my server is vulnerable to CVE-2023-52501?

Run 'uname -r' to display your kernel version. If the output shows a version between 6.2 and 6.5.6, or between 5.15.0 and 5.15.133, your system is vulnerable and requires immediate patching.

Does Defensia detect CVE-2023-52501?

Yes — Defensia's CVE advisory scanner compares installed package versions against the NVD database. If Kernel is installed on a monitored server, CVE-2023-52501 will appear in your dashboard with remediation steps.

Related Kernel CVEs

CVE-2024-42256CVSS 9.8In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: cifs: Fix server re-repick on subrequest retry When a subrequest is marked for needing retry, netfs will call cifs_prepare_write() which will make cifs repick the server for the op before renegotiating credits; it then calls cifs_issue_write() which invokes smb2_async_writev() - which re-repicks the server. If a different server is then selected, this causes the increment of server->in_flight to happen against one record and the decrement to happen against another, leading to misaccounting. Fix this by just removing the repick code in smb2_async_writev(). As this is only called from netfslib-driven code, cifs_prepare_write() should always have been called first, and so server should never be NULL and the preparatory step is repeated in the event that we do a retry. The problem manifests as a warning looking something like: WARNING: CPU: 4 PID: 72896 at fs/smb/client/smb2ops.c:97 smb2_add_credits+0x3f0/0x9e0 [cifs] ... RIP: 0010:smb2_add_credits+0x3f0/0x9e0 [cifs] ... smb2_writev_callback+0x334/0x560 [cifs] cifs_demultiplex_thread+0x77a/0x11b0 [cifs] kthread+0x187/0x1d0 ret_from_fork+0x34/0x60 ret_from_fork_asm+0x1a/0x30 Which may be triggered by a number of different xfstests running against an Azure server in multichannel mode. generic/249 seems the most repeatable, but generic/215, generic/249 and generic/308 may also show it.
CVE-2024-36031CVSS 9.8In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: keys: Fix overwrite of key expiration on instantiation The expiry time of a key is unconditionally overwritten during instantiation, defaulting to turn it permanent. This causes a problem for DNS resolution as the expiration set by user-space is overwritten to TIME64_MAX, disabling further DNS updates. Fix this by restoring the condition that key_set_expiry is only called when the pre-parser sets a specific expiry.
CVE-2024-38612CVSS 9.8In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ipv6: sr: fix invalid unregister error path The error path of seg6_init() is wrong in case CONFIG_IPV6_SEG6_LWTUNNEL is not defined. In that case if seg6_hmac_init() fails, the genl_unregister_family() isn't called. This issue exist since commit 46738b1317e1 ("ipv6: sr: add option to control lwtunnel support"), and commit 5559cea2d5aa ("ipv6: sr: fix possible use-after-free and null-ptr-deref") replaced unregister_pernet_subsys() with genl_unregister_family() in this error path.
CVE-2024-38623CVSS 9.8In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: fs/ntfs3: Use variable length array instead of fixed size Should fix smatch warning: ntfs_set_label() error: __builtin_memcpy() 'uni->name' too small (20 vs 256)
CVE-2021-47548CVSS 9.8In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ethernet: hisilicon: hns: hns_dsaf_misc: fix a possible array overflow in hns_dsaf_ge_srst_by_port() The if statement: if (port >= DSAF_GE_NUM) return; limits the value of port less than DSAF_GE_NUM (i.e., 8). However, if the value of port is 6 or 7, an array overflow could occur: port_rst_off = dsaf_dev->mac_cb[port]->port_rst_off; because the length of dsaf_dev->mac_cb is DSAF_MAX_PORT_NUM (i.e., 6). To fix this possible array overflow, we first check port and if it is greater than or equal to DSAF_MAX_PORT_NUM, the function returns.

References

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