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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2023-52449 json

mtd: Fix gluebi NULL pointer dereference caused by ftl notifier

published 2024-02-22 2 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2023-57074

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 15%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

mtd: Fix gluebi NULL pointer dereference caused by ftl notifier

If both ftl.ko and gluebi.ko are loaded, the notifier of ftl triggers NULL pointer dereference when trying to access ‘gluebi->desc’ in gluebi_read().

ubi_gluebi_init ubi_register_volume_notifier ubi_enumerate_volumes ubi_notify_all gluebi_notify nb->notifier_call() gluebi_create mtd_device_register mtd_device_parse_register add_mtd_device blktrans_notify_add not->add() ftl_add_mtd tr->add_mtd() scan_header mtd_read mtd_read_oob mtd_read_oob_std gluebi_read mtd->read() gluebi->desc - NULL

Detailed reproduction information available at the Link [1],

In the normal case, obtain gluebi->desc in the gluebi_get_device(), and access gluebi->desc in the gluebi_read(). However, gluebi_get_device() is not executed in advance in the ftl_add_mtd() process, which leads to NULL pointer dereference.

The solution for the gluebi module is to run jffs2 on the UBI volume without considering working with ftl or mtdblock [2]. Therefore, this problem can be avoided by preventing gluebi from creating the mtdblock device after creating mtd partition of the type MTD_UBIVOLUME.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 4.19.306, 5.4.268, 5.10.209, 5.15.148, 6.1.75, 6.6.14, 6.7.2, 6.8
  • linux Debian 12 6.1.76-1
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13 6.6.15-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2023-52449

  • linux Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-176.196
  • linux Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-102.112
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1122.132
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1057.63
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1126.135
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1055.63
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1054.59
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1069.74

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2023-52449

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • kernel-rt SLE Micro 5.4, SLE Micro 5.3, openSUSE Leap Micro 5.4 +1 more 5.14.21-150400.15.71.1
  • kernel-source-rt SLE Micro 5.4, SLE Micro 5.3 5.14.21-150400.15.71.1
  • kernel-rt SLE Real Time 12 SP5 4.12.14-10.171.1
  • kernel-syms-rt SLE Real Time 12 SP5 4.12.14-10.171.1
  • kernel-rt_debug SLE Real Time 12 SP5 4.12.14-10.171.1
  • kernel-source-rt SLE Real Time 12 SP5 4.12.14-10.171.1
  • kernel-azure SLES for SAP 12 SP5, SLES 12 SP5 4.12.14-16.173.1
  • kernel-syms-azure SLES for SAP 12 SP5, SLES 12 SP5 4.12.14-16.173.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2024:1669-1SUSE-SU-2024:0977-1SUSE-SU-2024:0976-1SUSE-SU-2024:0975-1SUSE-SU-2024:0926-1SUSE-SU-2024:0925-1

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2023-52449 updated cvss 4.1

kernel: mtd: Fix gluebi NULL pointer dereference caused by ftl notifier

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +82 more
    not affected: vulnerable code not present “No mitigation is currently available for this vulnerability. Make sure to perform the updates as they become available.”

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
2 y ago

Exploit prediction

0.24% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 15% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Weakness
Technology feeds

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.