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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2023-53294 json

fs/ntfs3: Fix null-ptr-deref on inode->i_op in ntfs_lookup()

published 2025-09-16 13 mo ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2023-59895

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:

fs/ntfs3: Fix null-ptr-deref on inode->i_op in ntfs_lookup()

Syzbot reported a null-ptr-deref bug:

ntfs3: loop0: Different NTFS' sector size (1024) and media sector size (512) ntfs3: loop0: Mark volume as dirty due to NTFS errors general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0xdffffc0000000001: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP KASAN KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x0000000000000008-0x000000000000000f] RIP: 0010:d_flags_for_inode fs/dcache.c:1980 [inline] RIP: 0010:__d_add+0x5ce/0x800 fs/dcache.c:2796 Call Trace: <TASK> d_splice_alias+0x122/0x3b0 fs/dcache.c:3191 lookup_open fs/namei.c:3391 [inline] open_last_lookups fs/namei.c:3481 [inline] path_openat+0x10e6/0x2df0 fs/namei.c:3688 do_filp_open+0x264/0x4f0 fs/namei.c:3718 do_sys_openat2+0x124/0x4e0 fs/open.c:1310 do_sys_open fs/open.c:1326 [inline] __do_sys_open fs/open.c:1334 [inline] __se_sys_open fs/open.c:1330 [inline] __x64_sys_open+0x221/0x270 fs/open.c:1330 do_syscall_x64 arch/x86/entry/common.c:50 [inline] do_syscall_64+0x3d/0xb0 arch/x86/entry/common.c:80 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x63/0xcd

If the MFT record of ntfs inode is not a base record, inode->i_op can be NULL. And a null-ptr-deref may happen:

ntfs_lookup() dir_search_u() # inode->i_op is set to NULL d_splice_alias() __d_add() d_flags_for_inode() # inode->i_op->get_link null-ptr-deref

Fix this by adding a Check on inode->i_op before calling the d_splice_alias() function.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 5.15.112, 6.1.29, 6.2.16, 6.3.3, 6.4
  • linux Debian 12 6.1.37-1
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13 6.3.7-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2023-53294

  • linux Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-83.92
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1044.49
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1041.49
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1041.46
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1037.40
  • linux-kvm Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1041.46
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1046.53
  • linux-gkeop Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1027.32

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53294

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

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-2023-53294 updated

kernel: fs/ntfs3: Fix null-ptr-deref on inode->i_op in ntfs_lookup()

  • 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

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.