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Fencer Vulns
medium 4.7

CVE-2023-53166 json

power: supply: bq25890: Fix external_power_changed race

published 2025-09-15 13 mo ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2023-59810

cvss
4.7
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.1%
EPSS 0.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 1%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

power: supply: bq25890: Fix external_power_changed race

bq25890_charger_external_power_changed() dereferences bq->charger, which gets sets in bq25890_power_supply_init() like this:

bq->charger = devm_power_supply_register(bq->dev, &bq->desc, &psy_cfg);

As soon as devm_power_supply_register() has called device_add() the external_power_changed callback can get called. So there is a window where bq25890_charger_external_power_changed() may get called while bq->charger has not been set yet leading to a NULL pointer dereference.

This race hits during boot sometimes on a Lenovo Yoga Book 1 yb1-x90f when the cht_wcove_pwrsrc (extcon) power_supply is done with detecting the connected charger-type which happens to exactly hit the small window:

BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000018 <snip> RIP: 0010:__power_supply_is_supplied_by+0xb/0xb0 <snip> Call Trace: <TASK> __power_supply_get_supplier_property+0x19/0x50 class_for_each_device+0xb1/0xe0 power_supply_get_property_from_supplier+0x2e/0x50 bq25890_charger_external_power_changed+0x38/0x1b0 [bq25890_charger] __power_supply_changed_work+0x30/0x40 class_for_each_device+0xb1/0xe0 power_supply_changed_work+0x5f/0xe0 <snip>

Fixing this is easy. The external_power_changed callback gets passed the power_supply which will eventually get stored in bq->charger, so bq25890_charger_external_power_changed() can simply directly use the passed in psy argument which is always valid.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.1.31, 6.3.5, 6.4
  • linux Debian 12 6.1.37-1
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13 6.3.7-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2023-53166

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-2023-53166 updated

kernel: power: supply: bq25890: Fix external_power_changed race

  • 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

Exploit prediction

0.11% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 1% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 4.7 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-362 Concurrent Execution using Shared Resource with Improper Synchronization
Technology feeds

References

Sources

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