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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2023-52596 json

sysctl: Fix out of bounds access for empty sysctl registers

published 2024-03-06 2 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2023-57220

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 13%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

sysctl: Fix out of bounds access for empty sysctl registers

When registering tables to the sysctl subsystem there is a check to see if header is a permanently empty directory (used for mounts). This check evaluates the first element of the ctl_table. This results in an out of bounds evaluation when registering empty directories.

The function register_sysctl_mount_point now passes a ctl_table of size 1 instead of size 0. It now relies solely on the type to identify a permanently empty register.

Make sure that the ctl_table has at least one element before testing for permanent emptiness.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.6.16, 6.7.4, 6.8
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13 6.7.7-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2023-52596

  • linux-raspi-realtime Ubuntu Pro Realtime 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-2001.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2023-52596

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

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-2023-52596 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: sysctl: Fix out of bounds access for empty sysctl registers

  • 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

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

0.23% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 13% 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.