Skip to content
Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2023-52978 json

riscv: kprobe: Fixup kernel panic when probing an illegal position

published 2025-03-27 19 mo ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2023-59742

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.3%
EPSS 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 17%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

riscv: kprobe: Fixup kernel panic when probing an illegal position

The kernel would panic when probed for an illegal position. eg:

(CONFIG_RISCV_ISA_C=n)

echo 'p:hello kernel_clone+0x16 a0=%a0' >> kprobe_events echo 1 > events/kprobes/hello/enable cat trace

Kernel panic - not syncing: stack-protector: Kernel stack is corrupted in: __do_sys_newfstatat+0xb8/0xb8 CPU: 0 PID: 111 Comm: sh Not tainted 6.2.0-rc1-00027-g2d398fe49a4d #490 Hardware name: riscv-virtio,qemu (DT) Call Trace: [<ffffffff80007268>] dump_backtrace+0x38/0x48 [<ffffffff80c5e83c>] show_stack+0x50/0x68 [<ffffffff80c6da28>] dump_stack_lvl+0x60/0x84 [<ffffffff80c6da6c>] dump_stack+0x20/0x30 [<ffffffff80c5ecf4>] panic+0x160/0x374 [<ffffffff80c6db94>] generic_handle_arch_irq+0x0/0xa8 [<ffffffff802deeb0>] sys_newstat+0x0/0x30 [<ffffffff800158c0>] sys_clone+0x20/0x30 [<ffffffff800039e8>] ret_from_syscall+0x0/0x4 ---[ end Kernel panic - not syncing: stack-protector: Kernel stack is corrupted in: __do_sys_newfstatat+0xb8/0xb8 ]---

That is because the kprobe's ebreak instruction broke the kernel's original code. The user should guarantee the correction of the probe position, but it couldn't make the kernel panic.

This patch adds arch_check_kprobe in arch_prepare_kprobe to prevent an illegal position (Such as the middle of an instruction).

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 5.15.93, 6.1.11, 6.2
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 6.1.11-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2023-52978

  • linux Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-72.79
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1036.40
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1034.42
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1033.38
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1030.33
  • linux-kvm Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1033.38
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1038.45
  • linux-gkeop Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1020.25

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2023-52978

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-2023-52978 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: riscv: kprobe: Fixup kernel panic when probing an illegal position

  • 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, +83 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel
    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
13 mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.26% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 17% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

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

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.