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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2023-53250 json

firmware: dmi-sysfs: Fix null-ptr-deref in dmi_sysfs_register_handle

published 2025-09-15 13 mo ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2023-59834

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.1%
EPSS 0.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 4%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

firmware: dmi-sysfs: Fix null-ptr-deref in dmi_sysfs_register_handle

KASAN reported a null-ptr-deref error:

KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x0000000000000008-0x000000000000000f] CPU: 0 PID: 1373 Comm: modprobe Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996) RIP: 0010:dmi_sysfs_entry_release ... Call Trace: <TASK> kobject_put dmi_sysfs_register_handle (drivers/firmware/dmi-sysfs.c:540) dmi_sysfs dmi_decode_table (drivers/firmware/dmi_scan.c:133) dmi_walk (drivers/firmware/dmi_scan.c:1115) dmi_sysfs_init (drivers/firmware/dmi-sysfs.c:149) dmi_sysfs do_one_initcall (init/main.c:1296) ... Kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal exception Kernel Offset: 0x4000000 from 0xffffffff81000000 ---[ end Kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal exception ]---

It is because previous patch added kobject_put() to release the memory which will call dmi_sysfs_entry_release() and list_del().

However, list_add_tail(entry->list) is called after the error block, so the list_head is uninitialized and cannot be deleted.

Move error handling to after list_add_tail to fix this.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 4.10, 4.15, 4.20, 5.5, 5.11, 5.15.99, 5.18, 5.19, 6.1.16, 6.2.3, 6.3
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 6.1.20-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2023-53250

  • linux Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-75.82
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1038.43
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1036.44
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1036.41
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1032.35
  • linux-kvm Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1035.40
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1040.47
  • linux-gkeop Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1022.27

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53250

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-rt SLE Micro 5.5 5.14.21-150500.13.109.1
  • kernel-source-rt SLE Micro 5.5 5.14.21-150500.13.109.1
  • kernel-rt SLE Micro 5.4, SLE Micro 5.3 5.14.21-150400.15.133.1
  • kernel-source-rt SLE Micro 5.4, SLE Micro 5.3 5.14.21-150400.15.133.1
  • kernel-64kb SLES 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP4-ESPOS 5.14.21-150400.24.179.1
  • kernel-syms SLES for SAP 15 SP4, SLES 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP4-LTSS +3 more 5.14.21-150400.24.179.1
  • kernel-source SLES for SAP 15 SP4, SLES 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP4-LTSS +3 more 5.14.21-150400.24.179.1
  • kernel-default SLES for SAP 15 SP4, SLES 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.4 +7 more 5.14.21-150400.24.179.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2025:3761-1SUSE-SU-2025:3716-1SUSE-SU-2025:03628-1SUSE-SU-2025:03615-1SUSE-SU-2025:03614-1

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-2023-53250 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: firmware: dmi-sysfs: Fix null-ptr-deref in dmi_sysfs_register_handle

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more
    affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • 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 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
9 mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.15% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 4% 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.