CVE-2023-53172 json
fsverity: reject FS_IOC_ENABLE_VERITY on mode 3 fds
published 2025-09-15 13 mo ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2023-59804
- cvss
- 5.5
- 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 3%
- public exploits
- 0
- none known
Summary
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
fsverity: reject FS_IOC_ENABLE_VERITY on mode 3 fds
Commit 56124d6c87fd ("fsverity: support enabling with tree block size < PAGE_SIZE") changed FS_IOC_ENABLE_VERITY to use __kernel_read() to read the file's data, instead of direct pagecache accesses.
An unintended consequence of this is that the 'WARN_ON_ONCE(!(file->f_mode & FMODE_READ))' in __kernel_read() became reachable by fuzz tests. This happens if FS_IOC_ENABLE_VERITY is called on a fd opened with access mode 3, which means "ioctl access only".
Arguably, FS_IOC_ENABLE_VERITY should work on ioctl-only fds. But ioctl-only fds are a weird Linux extension that is rarely used and that few people even know about. (The documentation for FS_IOC_ENABLE_VERITY even specifically says it requires O_RDONLY.) It's probably not worthwhile to make the ioctl internally open a new fd just to handle this case. Thus, just reject the ioctl on such fds for now.
Patch / fix
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-2023-53172 updated cvss 5.8
kernel: fsverity: reject FS_IOC_ENABLE_VERITY on mode 3 fds
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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 kernelnot 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
0.14% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 3% 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
- Technology feeds
References
Sources
- CVE List CVE-2023-53172
- NVD CVE-2023-53172
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