CVE-2023-53638 (GCVE-0-2023-53638)
Vulnerability from cvelistv5 – Published: 2025-10-07 15:19 – Updated: 2026-08-05 09:15
VLAI
EPSS
VEX
Title
octeon_ep: cancel queued works in probe error path
Summary
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
octeon_ep: cancel queued works in probe error path
If it fails to get the devices's MAC address, octep_probe exits while
leaving the delayed work intr_poll_task queued. When the work later
runs, it's a use after free.
Move the cancelation of intr_poll_task from octep_remove into
octep_device_cleanup. This does not change anything in the octep_remove
flow, but octep_device_cleanup is called also in the octep_probe error
path, where the cancelation is needed.
Note that the cancelation of ctrl_mbox_task has to follow
intr_poll_task's, because the ctrl_mbox_task may be queued by
intr_poll_task.
Severity
Assigner
References
Impacted products
2 products
| Vendor | Product | Version | CPE status | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Linux | Linux |
Affected:
24d4333233b378114106a1327d3d635a004f4387 , < 62312e2f6466b5f0a120542a38b410d88a34ed00
(git)
Affected: 24d4333233b378114106a1327d3d635a004f4387 , < 758c91078165ae641b698750a72eafe7968b3756 (git) |
guessed | |
| Linux | Linux |
Affected:
6.4
Unaffected: 0 , < 6.4 (semver) Unaffected: 6.4.12 , ≤ 6.4.* (semver) Unaffected: 6.5 , ≤ * (original_commit_for_fix) |
guessed |
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"value": "AV:L - The vulnerable code is the PCI probe path of the octeon_ep driver, reached via local device enumeration, hotplug, module load, or sysfs bind/unbind on the host. No remote network protocol handling is involved.\nAC:H - Exploitation requires `octep_probe()` to fail after the poll work is queued \u2014 i.e. the Octeon endpoint firmware must fail to answer the MAC-address mailbox request within the 500 ms timeout (or register_netdev must fail), a device/firmware state an attacker on the host cannot reliably force. Turning the resulting UAF into more than an oops additionally requires reclaiming the freed netdev allocation within the ~50 ms work delay.\nPR:L - The UAF fires from a workqueue with no host credentials needed once probe fails, and the probe can be re-triggered through driver bind/unbind; a low-privileged attacker suffices to be present when the freed object is reclaimed, so PR is not raised to High.\nUI:N - The delayed work fires automatically 50 ms after the probe error path frees the device; no victim action is required beyond the normal device probe that happens at boot or hotplug.\nS:U - Both the vulnerable code and the corrupted memory are in the host kernel, so the impact stays within a single security authority; no VM, IOMMU, or sandbox boundary is crossed.\nC:H - The work handler reads `oct-\u003epoll_non_ioq_intr` and the `hw_ops` function-pointer table out of freed slab memory; controlling the reclaiming allocation gives an attacker a read primitive over kernel heap contents and leaks kernel state.\nI:H - `queue_delayed_work()` and `queue_work()` write into the freed work/timer structures, and `oct-\u003ehw_ops.poll_non_ioq_interrupts(oct)` is an indirect call through a function pointer read from freed memory \u2014 a direct control-flow hijack primitive once the allocation is sprayed.\nA:H - Even unexploited, the work dereferences freed memory and accesses already-iounmap\u0027ed MMIO, reliably producing a kernel oops/panic (this is the crash the fix was written for)."
}
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Experimental. This forecast is provided for visualization only and may change without notice. Do not use it for operational decisions.
Forecast uses a logistic model when the trend is rising, or an exponential decay model when the trend is falling. Fitted via linearized least squares.
Sightings
| 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.
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The MITRE ATT&CK techniques below are AI-generated suggestions, inferred from the description of the
vulnerability by the CIRCL/vulnerability-attack-technique-classification-roberta-base
model, served locally by ML-Gateway.
They have not been verified by an analyst and are provided for guidance only.
The approach is described in our paper Mapping CVEs to MITRE ATT&CK Techniques: A Curated Gold-Set Classifier and the Limits of LLM-Assisted Label Expansion.
Browse all ATT&CK techniques and the vulnerabilities related to each.
The approach is described in our paper Mapping CVEs to MITRE ATT&CK Techniques: A Curated Gold-Set Classifier and the Limits of LLM-Assisted Label Expansion.
Browse all ATT&CK techniques and the vulnerabilities related to each.
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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.
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