CVE-2023-53167 (GCVE-0-2023-53167)

Vulnerability from cvelistv5 – Published: 2025-09-15 14:03 – Updated: 2026-05-11 19:39
VLAI
Title
tracing: Fix null pointer dereference in tracing_err_log_open()
Summary
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: tracing: Fix null pointer dereference in tracing_err_log_open() Fix an issue in function 'tracing_err_log_open'. The function doesn't call 'seq_open' if the file is opened only with write permissions, which results in 'file->private_data' being left as null. If we then use 'lseek' on that opened file, 'seq_lseek' dereferences 'file->private_data' in 'mutex_lock(&m->lock)', resulting in a kernel panic. Writing to this node requires root privileges, therefore this bug has very little security impact. Tracefs node: /sys/kernel/tracing/error_log Example Kernel panic: Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 0000000000000038 Call trace: mutex_lock+0x30/0x110 seq_lseek+0x34/0xb8 __arm64_sys_lseek+0x6c/0xb8 invoke_syscall+0x58/0x13c el0_svc_common+0xc4/0x10c do_el0_svc+0x24/0x98 el0_svc+0x24/0x88 el0t_64_sync_handler+0x84/0xe4 el0t_64_sync+0x1b4/0x1b8 Code: d503201f aa0803e0 aa1f03e1 aa0103e9 (c8e97d02) ---[ end trace 561d1b49c12cf8a5 ]--- Kernel panic - not syncing: Oops: Fatal exception
Assigner
Linux CNA under the mitre root
CNA scorecard D 53/100 over 7033 records in the last 180 days details
Impacted products
Vendor Product Version CPE status
Linux Linux Affected: 8a062902be725f647dc8da532b04d836546a369a , < 93114cbc7cb169f6f26eeaed5286b91bb86b463b (git)
Affected: 8a062902be725f647dc8da532b04d836546a369a , < 7060e5aac6dc195124c106f49106d653a416323a (git)
Affected: 8a062902be725f647dc8da532b04d836546a369a , < 3b5d9b7b875968a8a8c99dac45cb85b705c44802 (git)
Affected: 8a062902be725f647dc8da532b04d836546a369a , < 938d5b7a75e18264887387ddf9169db6d8aeef98 (git)
Affected: 8a062902be725f647dc8da532b04d836546a369a , < 1e1c9aa9288a46c342f0f2c5c0b1c0876b9b0276 (git)
Affected: 8a062902be725f647dc8da532b04d836546a369a , < 02b0095e2fbbc060560c1065f86a211d91e27b26 (git)
guessed Create a notification for this product.
Linux Linux Affected: 5.2
Unaffected: 0 , < 5.2 (semver)
Unaffected: 5.4.251 , ≤ 5.4.* (semver)
Unaffected: 5.10.188 , ≤ 5.10.* (semver)
Unaffected: 5.15.121 , ≤ 5.15.* (semver)
Unaffected: 6.1.40 , ≤ 6.1.* (semver)
Unaffected: 6.4.5 , ≤ 6.4.* (semver)
Unaffected: 6.5 , ≤ * (original_commit_for_fix)
guessed Create a notification for this product.
Show details on NVD website

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      "cve": "CVE-2023-53167",
      "id": "CVE-2023-53167",
      "initial_release_date": "2023-01-01T00:00:00+00:00",
      "product_status:known_affected": "108",
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      "title": "kernel: tracing: Fix null pointer dereference in tracing_err_log_open()",
      "url": "https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/2023/cve-2023-53167.json",
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      "id": "CVE-2023-53167",
      "initial_release_date": "2025-09-15T23:27:48Z",
      "product_status:known_affected": "413",
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      "product_status:recommended": "516",
      "source": "SUSE CSAF VEX",
      "status": "interim",
      "title": "SUSE CVE CVE-2023-53167",
      "url": "https://ftp.suse.com/pub/projects/security/csaf-vex/2025/cve-2023-53167.json",
      "version": "51"
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}



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Author Source Type Date Other

Nomenclature

  • Seen: The vulnerability was mentioned, discussed, or observed by the user.
  • Confirmed: The vulnerability has been validated from an analyst's perspective.
  • Published Proof of Concept: A public proof of concept is available for this vulnerability.
  • Exploited: The vulnerability was observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
  • Patched: The vulnerability was observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
  • Not exploited: The vulnerability was not observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
  • Not confirmed: The user expressed doubt about the validity of the vulnerability.
  • Not patched: The vulnerability was not observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
Vulnerability timeline

Sightings and recorded dates, grouped by day · UTC

JSON
How durations are calculated

Following the VTEM framework (Black Hat USA 2015), time to patch starts when the vendor or a coordinator was informed, total time to patch at discovery, and disclosure to patch at public disclosure; vendor response time runs from the report to its acknowledgement. Time to exploit and time unpatched start at the earliest discovery or report, falling back to public disclosure. Unpatched time ends at the first recorded patch, or the calculation time when no patch is recorded. Exploitation to patch shows the interval between those two events; a published proof of concept is a public exploit, not exploitation.

Each result shows its source dates. A negative interval means the end event came first; when date-only inputs leave the order open, the result says so. Date-only inputs are approximate. The earliest evidence wins: KEV report dates and sightings are labelled as such. Records describing another vulnerability are listed but never calculated from, and a PoC alone does not establish exploitation. Missing patch evidence does not prove that no patch exists. Filters below change the event list only.

Events included in the timeline

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    Related by attack behaviour

    Vulnerabilities whose description is nearest to this one in the vector space of the CIRCL/vulnerability-attack-technique-biencoder model. This is a similarity search over the bi-encoder space (plain cosine), not a classification, and it has no measured accuracy.