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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2023-53532 json

wifi: ath11k: fix deinitialization of firmware resources

published 2025-10-01 13 mo ago modified 2026-11-05 3 d ago also EUVD-2025-32754

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 4%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

wifi: ath11k: fix deinitialization of firmware resources

Currently, in ath11k_ahb_fw_resources_init(), iommu domain mapping is done only for the chipsets having fixed firmware memory. Also, for such chipsets, mapping is done only if it does not have TrustZone support.

During deinitialization, only if TrustZone support is not there, iommu is unmapped back. However, for non fixed firmware memory chipsets, TrustZone support is not there and this makes the condition check to true and it tries to unmap the memory which was not mapped during initialization.

This leads to the following trace -

[ 83.198790] Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 0000000000000008 [ 83.259537] Modules linked in: ath11k_ahb ath11k qmi_helpers .. snip .. [ 83.280286] pstate: 20000005 (nzCv daif -PAN -UAO -TCO -DIT -SSBS BTYPE=--) [ 83.287228] pc : __iommu_unmap+0x30/0x140 [ 83.293907] lr : iommu_unmap+0x5c/0xa4 [ 83.298072] sp : ffff80000b3abad0 .. snip .. [ 83.369175] Call trace: [ 83.376282] __iommu_unmap+0x30/0x140 [ 83.378541] iommu_unmap+0x5c/0xa4 [ 83.382360] ath11k_ahb_fw_resource_deinit.part.12+0x2c/0xac [ath11k_ahb] [ 83.385666] ath11k_ahb_free_resources+0x140/0x17c [ath11k_ahb] [ 83.392521] ath11k_ahb_shutdown+0x34/0x40 [ath11k_ahb] [ 83.398248] platform_shutdown+0x20/0x2c [ 83.403455] device_shutdown+0x16c/0x1c4 [ 83.407621] kernel_restart_prepare+0x34/0x3c [ 83.411529] kernel_restart+0x14/0x74 [ 83.415781] __do_sys_reboot+0x1c4/0x22c [ 83.419427] __arm64_sys_reboot+0x1c/0x24 [ 83.423420] invoke_syscall+0x44/0xfc [ 83.427326] el0_svc_common.constprop.3+0xac/0xe8 [ 83.430974] do_el0_svc+0xa0/0xa8 [ 83.435659] el0_svc+0x1c/0x44 [ 83.438957] el0t_64_sync_handler+0x60/0x144 [ 83.441910] el0t_64_sync+0x15c/0x160 [ 83.446343] Code: aa0103f4 f9400001 f90027a1 d2800001 (f94006a0) [ 83.449903] ---[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]---

This can be reproduced by probing an AHB chipset which is not having a fixed memory region. During reboot (or rmmod) trace can be seen.

Fix this issue by adding a condition check on firmware fixed memory hw_param as done in the counter initialization function.

Tested-on: IPQ8074 hw2.0 AHB WLAN.HK.2.7.0.1-01744-QCAHKSWPL_SILICONZ-1

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.1.28, 6.2.15, 6.3.2, 6.4
  • linux Debian 12 6.1.37-1
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13 6.3.7-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2023-53532

  • kernel RHEL 8 4.18.0-513.5.1.el8_9
  • perf RHEL 8 4.18.0-513.5.1.el8_9
  • bpftool RHEL 8 4.18.0-513.5.1.el8_9
  • kernel-core RHEL 8 4.18.0-513.5.1.el8_9
  • kernel-tools RHEL 8 4.18.0-513.5.1.el8_9
  • python3-perf RHEL 8 4.18.0-513.5.1.el8_9
  • kernel-modules RHEL 8 4.18.0-513.5.1.el8_9
  • kernel-zfcpdump RHEL 8 4.18.0-513.5.1.el8_9

red hat advisories RHSA-2023:7077RHSA-2023:6583

  • 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-64kb SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP5-ESPOS 5.14.21-150500.55.124.1
  • kernel-syms SLES for SAP 15 SP5, SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP5-LTSS +1 more 5.14.21-150500.55.124.1
  • kernel-source SLES for SAP 15 SP5, SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.5 +2 more 5.14.21-150500.55.124.1
  • kernel-default SLES for SAP 15 SP5, SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.5 +3 more 5.14.21-150500.55.124.1
  • kernel-obs-build SLES for SAP 15 SP5, SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP5-LTSS +1 more 5.14.21-150500.55.124.1
  • kernel-default-base SLES for SAP 15 SP5, SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.5 +2 more 5.14.21-150500.55.124.1.150500.6.59.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2025:3761-1SUSE-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-2023-53532 updated cvss 4.7

kernel: wifi: ath11k: fix deinitialization of firmware resources

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 kernel-rt, kernel-rt-kvm, kernel-rt-core, kernel-rt-modules, kernel-rt-debug-kvm, kernel-rt-debug-core, +6 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more
    affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • Red Hat CodeReady Linux Builder (v. 8) kernel-debuginfo-common-x86_64 4.18.0-513.5.1.el8_9, kernel-debuginfo-common-aarch64 4.18.0-513.5.1.el8_9, kernel-debuginfo-common-ppc64le 4.18.0-513.5.1.el8_9 Red Hat Enterprise Linux BaseOS (v. 8) perf 4.18.0-513.5.1.el8_9, kernel 4.18.0-513.5.1.el8_9, bpftool 4.18.0-513.5.1.el8_9, kernel-core 4.18.0-513.5.1.el8_9, kernel-tools 4.18.0-513.5.1.el8_9, python3-perf 4.18.0-513.5.1.el8_9, +15 more
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2023:7077
  • 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

0.15% 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
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-908 Use of Uninitialized Resource
Technology feeds

References

Sources

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