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Fencer Vulns
high 7.1

CVE-2023-53272 json

net: ena: fix shift-out-of-bounds in exponential backoff

published 2025-09-16 13 mo ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2023-59917

cvss
7.1
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 5%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

net: ena: fix shift-out-of-bounds in exponential backoff

The ENA adapters on our instances occasionally reset. Once recently logged a UBSAN failure to console in the process:

UBSAN: shift-out-of-bounds in build/linux/drivers/net/ethernet/amazon/ena/ena_com.c:540:13 shift exponent 32 is too large for 32-bit type 'unsigned int' CPU: 28 PID: 70012 Comm: kworker/u72:2 Kdump: loaded not tainted 5.15.117 Hardware name: Amazon EC2 c5d.9xlarge/, BIOS 1.0 10/16/2017 Workqueue: ena ena_fw_reset_device [ena] Call Trace: <TASK> dump_stack_lvl+0x4a/0x63 dump_stack+0x10/0x16 ubsan_epilogue+0x9/0x36 __ubsan_handle_shift_out_of_bounds.cold+0x61/0x10e ? __const_udelay+0x43/0x50 ena_delay_exponential_backoff_us.cold+0x16/0x1e [ena] wait_for_reset_state+0x54/0xa0 [ena] ena_com_dev_reset+0xc8/0x110 [ena] ena_down+0x3fe/0x480 [ena] ena_destroy_device+0xeb/0xf0 [ena] ena_fw_reset_device+0x30/0x50 [ena] process_one_work+0x22b/0x3d0 worker_thread+0x4d/0x3f0 ? process_one_work+0x3d0/0x3d0 kthread+0x12a/0x150 ? set_kthread_struct+0x50/0x50 ret_from_fork+0x22/0x30 </TASK>

Apparently, the reset delays are getting so large they can trigger a UBSAN panic.

Looking at the code, the current timeout is capped at 5000us. Using a base value of 100us, the current code will overflow after (1<<29). Even at values before 32, this function wraps around, perhaps unintentionally.

Cap the value of the exponent used for this backoff at (1<<16) which is larger than currently necessary, but large enough to support bigger values in the future.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 5.10.188, 5.15.121, 6.1.40, 6.4.5, 6.5
  • linux Debian 12 6.1.52-1
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13 6.4.11-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2023-53272

  • linux Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-86.96
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1047.52
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1044.52
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1044.49
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1040.43
  • linux-kvm Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1044.49
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1049.56
  • linux-gkeop Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1030.35

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53272

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 Real Time Module 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.7.22.1
  • kernel-syms-rt Real Time Module 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.7.22.1
  • kernel-source-rt Real Time Module 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.7.22.1
  • kernel-azure SLE Module for Public Cloud 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.20.18.1
  • kernel-syms-azure SLE Module for Public Cloud 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.20.18.1
  • kernel-source-azure SLE Module for Public Cloud 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.20.18.1
  • kernel-64kb SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.53.22.1
  • kernel-syms SLE Module for Development Tools 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.53.22.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2025:4141-1SUSE-SU-2025:4132-1SUSE-SU-2025:4057-1SUSE-SU-2025:20870-1SUSE-SU-2025:3761-1SUSE-SU-2025:20898-1

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-2023-53272 updated cvss 5.1

kernel: net: ena: fix shift-out-of-bounds in exponential backoff

  • 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
    affected: workaround, no fix available “To mitigate this issue, prevent module ena from being loaded. Please see https://access.redhat.com/solutions/41278 for how to blacklist a kernel module to prevent it from loading automatically.”
  • 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 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

0.16% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 5% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CISA ADP 3.1 7.1 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:H
NVD 3.1 7.1 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:H
CNA 3.1 7.1 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/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.