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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2023-52993 json

x86/i8259: Mark legacy PIC interrupts with IRQ_LEVEL

published 2025-03-27 19 mo ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2023-59727

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 19%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

x86/i8259: Mark legacy PIC interrupts with IRQ_LEVEL

Baoquan reported that after triggering a crash the subsequent crash-kernel fails to boot about half of the time. It triggers a NULL pointer dereference in the periodic tick code.

This happens because the legacy timer interrupt (IRQ0) is resent in software which happens in soft interrupt (tasklet) context. In this context get_irq_regs() returns NULL which leads to the NULL pointer dereference.

The reason for the resend is a spurious APIC interrupt on the IRQ0 vector which is captured and leads to a resend when the legacy timer interrupt is enabled. This is wrong because the legacy PIC interrupts are level triggered and therefore should never be resent in software, but nothing ever sets the IRQ_LEVEL flag on those interrupts, so the core code does not know about their trigger type.

Ensure that IRQ_LEVEL is set when the legacy PCI interrupts are set up.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 4.14.305, 4.19.272, 5.4.231, 5.10.166, 5.15.91, 6.1.9, 6.2
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 6.1.11-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2023-52993

  • linux Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 4.15.0-209.220
  • linux Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-147.164
  • linux Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-70.77
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 4.15.0-1154.167
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1100.108
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1034.38
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1103.112
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1032.40

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2023-52993

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 RHEL 9 5.14.0-362.8.1.el9_3
  • rv RHEL 9 5.14.0-362.8.1.el9_3
  • perf RHEL 9 5.14.0-362.8.1.el9_3
  • rtla RHEL 9 5.14.0-362.8.1.el9_3
  • bpftool RHEL 9 7.2.0-362.8.1.el9_3
  • libperf RHEL 9 5.14.0-362.8.1.el9_3
  • kernel-rt RHEL 9 5.14.0-362.8.1.el9_3
  • kernel-64k RHEL 9 5.14.0-362.8.1.el9_3

red hat advisories RHSA-2024:3421RHSA-2023:6583

  • kernel-64kb SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP5-ESPOS 5.14.21-150500.55.100.1
  • kernel-syms SLES for SAP 15 SP5, SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP5-LTSS +1 more 5.14.21-150500.55.100.1
  • kernel-source SLES for SAP 15 SP5, SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.5 +2 more 5.14.21-150500.55.100.1
  • kernel-default SLES for SAP 15 SP5, SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.5 +3 more 5.14.21-150500.55.100.1
  • kernel-obs-build SLES for SAP 15 SP5, SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP5-LTSS +1 more 5.14.21-150500.55.100.1
  • kernel-default-base SLES for SAP 15 SP5, SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.5 +2 more 5.14.21-150500.55.100.1.150500.6.47.1
  • kernel-64kb SLES 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP4-ESPOS 5.14.21-150400.24.161.1
  • kernel-syms SLES for SAP 15 SP4, SLES 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP4-LTSS +3 more 5.14.21-150400.24.161.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2025:01983-1SUSE-SU-2025:1241-1SUSE-SU-2025:1195-1SUSE-SU-2025:1183-1SUSE-SU-2025:1176-1

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-2023-52993 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: x86/i8259: Mark legacy PIC interrupts with IRQ_LEVEL

  • 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
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more
    affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • Red Hat CodeReady Linux Builder EUS (v.9.0) kernel-debuginfo-common-s390x 5.14.0-70.101.1.el9_0, kernel-debuginfo-common-x86_64 5.14.0-70.101.1.el9_0, kernel-debuginfo-common-aarch64 5.14.0-70.101.1.el9_0, kernel-debuginfo-common-ppc64le 5.14.0-70.101.1.el9_0 Red Hat Enterprise Linux AppStream EUS (v.9.0) perf 5.14.0-70.101.1.el9_0, kernel-devel-matched 5.14.0-70.101.1.el9_0, kernel-debug-devel-matched 5.14.0-70.101.1.el9_0, kernel-debuginfo-common-s390x 5.14.0-70.101.1.el9_0, kernel-zfcpdump-devel-matched 5.14.0-70.101.1.el9_0, kernel-debuginfo-common-x86_64 5.14.0-70.101.1.el9_0, +2 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux BaseOS EUS (v.9.0) kernel 5.14.0-70.101.1.el9_0, bpftool 5.14.0-70.101.1.el9_0, kernel-core 5.14.0-70.101.1.el9_0, kernel-tools 5.14.0-70.101.1.el9_0, python3-perf 5.14.0-70.101.1.el9_0, kernel-modules 5.14.0-70.101.1.el9_0, +14 more
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2024:3421
  • 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

0.27% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 19% 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

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.