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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2023-53529 json

wifi: rtw88: Fix memory leak in rtw88_usb

published 2025-10-01 13 mo ago modified 2026-11-05 3 d ago also EUVD-2025-32751

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 2%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

wifi: rtw88: Fix memory leak in rtw88_usb

Kmemleak shows the following leak arising from routine in the usb probe routine:

unreferenced object 0xffff895cb29bba00 (size 512): comm "(udev-worker)", pid 534, jiffies 4294903932 (age 102751.088s) hex dump (first 32 bytes): 77 30 30 30 00 00 00 00 02 2f 2d 2b 30 00 00 00 w000...../-+0... 02 00 2a 28 00 00 00 00 ff 55 ff ff ff 00 00 00 ..*(.....U...... backtrace: [<ffffffff9265fa36>] kmalloc_trace+0x26/0x90 [<ffffffffc17eec41>] rtw_usb_probe+0x2f1/0x680 [rtw_usb] [<ffffffffc03e19fd>] usb_probe_interface+0xdd/0x2e0 [usbcore] [<ffffffff92b4f2fe>] really_probe+0x18e/0x3d0 [<ffffffff92b4f5b8>] __driver_probe_device+0x78/0x160 [<ffffffff92b4f6bf>] driver_probe_device+0x1f/0x90 [<ffffffff92b4f8df>] __driver_attach+0xbf/0x1b0 [<ffffffff92b4d350>] bus_for_each_dev+0x70/0xc0 [<ffffffff92b4e51e>] bus_add_driver+0x10e/0x210 [<ffffffff92b50935>] driver_register+0x55/0xf0 [<ffffffffc03e0708>] usb_register_driver+0x88/0x140 [usbcore] [<ffffffff92401153>] do_one_initcall+0x43/0x210 [<ffffffff9254f42a>] do_init_module+0x4a/0x200 [<ffffffff92551d1c>] __do_sys_finit_module+0xac/0x120 [<ffffffff92ee6626>] do_syscall_64+0x56/0x80 [<ffffffff9300006a>] entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x46/0xb0

The leak was verified to be real by unloading the driver, which resulted in a dangling pointer to the allocation.

The allocated memory is freed in rtw_usb_intf_deinit().

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.3.4, 6.4
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13 6.3.7-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2023-53529

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-2023-53529 updated cvss 4.4

kernel: wifi: rtw88: Fix memory leak in rtw88_usb

  • 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: 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 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
3 d ago

Exploit prediction

0.13% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 2% 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

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.