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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2023-53468 json

ubifs: Fix memory leak in alloc_wbufs()

published 2025-10-01 13 mo ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2025-32800

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, NVD
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:

ubifs: Fix memory leak in alloc_wbufs()

kmemleak reported a sequence of memory leaks, and show them as following:

unreferenced object 0xffff8881575f8400 (size 1024): comm "mount", pid 19625, jiffies 4297119604 (age 20.383s) hex dump (first 32 bytes): 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ backtrace: [<ffffffff8176cecd>] __kmalloc+0x4d/0x150 [<ffffffffa0406b2b>] ubifs_mount+0x307b/0x7170 [ubifs] [<ffffffff819fa8fd>] legacy_get_tree+0xed/0x1d0 [<ffffffff81936f2d>] vfs_get_tree+0x7d/0x230 [<ffffffff819b2bd4>] path_mount+0xdd4/0x17b0 [<ffffffff819b37aa>] __x64_sys_mount+0x1fa/0x270 [<ffffffff83c14295>] do_syscall_64+0x35/0x80 [<ffffffff83e0006a>] entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x46/0xb0

unreferenced object 0xffff8881798a6e00 (size 512): comm "mount", pid 19677, jiffies 4297121912 (age 37.816s) hex dump (first 32 bytes): 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk backtrace: [<ffffffff8176cecd>] __kmalloc+0x4d/0x150 [<ffffffffa0418342>] ubifs_wbuf_init+0x52/0x480 [ubifs] [<ffffffffa0406ca5>] ubifs_mount+0x31f5/0x7170 [ubifs] [<ffffffff819fa8fd>] legacy_get_tree+0xed/0x1d0 [<ffffffff81936f2d>] vfs_get_tree+0x7d/0x230 [<ffffffff819b2bd4>] path_mount+0xdd4/0x17b0 [<ffffffff819b37aa>] __x64_sys_mount+0x1fa/0x270 [<ffffffff83c14295>] do_syscall_64+0x35/0x80 [<ffffffff83e0006a>] entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x46/0xb0

The problem is that the ubifs_wbuf_init() returns an error in the loop which in the alloc_wbufs(), then the wbuf->buf and wbuf->inodes that were successfully alloced before are not freed.

Fix it by adding error hanging path in alloc_wbufs() which frees the memory alloced before when ubifs_wbuf_init() returns an error.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 5.4.235, 5.10.173, 5.15.100, 6.1.18, 6.2.5, 6.3
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 6.1.20-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2023-53468

  • linux Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-152.169
  • linux Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-79.86
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1104.112
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1042.47
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1107.116
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1039.47
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1039.44
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1051.56

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53468

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-2025:03615-1

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-2023-53468 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: ubifs: Fix memory leak in alloc_wbufs()

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • 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

0.16% 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
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

Weakness
  • CWE-401 Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime
Technology feeds

References

Sources

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