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Fencer Vulns
no cvss —

CVE-2023-53706 json

mm/vmemmap/devdax: fix kernel crash when probing devdax devices

published 2025-10-22 12 mo ago modified 2026-10-28 11 d ago also EUVD-2023-60022

cvss
—
not scored
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 11%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

mm/vmemmap/devdax: fix kernel crash when probing devdax devices

commit 4917f55b4ef9 ("mm/sparse-vmemmap: improve memory savings for compound devmaps") added support for using optimized vmmemap for devdax devices. But how vmemmap mappings are created are architecture specific. For example, powerpc with hash translation doesn't have vmemmap mappings in init_mm page table instead they are bolted table entries in the hardware page table

vmemmap_populate_compound_pages() used by vmemmap optimization code is not aware of these architecture-specific mapping. Hence allow architecture to opt for this feature. I selected architectures supporting HUGETLB_PAGE_OPTIMIZE_VMEMMAP option as also supporting this feature.

This patch fixes the below crash on ppc64.

BUG: Unable to handle kernel data access on write at 0xc00c000100400038 Faulting instruction address: 0xc000000001269d90 Oops: Kernel access of bad area, sig: 11 [#1] LE PAGE_SIZE=64K MMU=Hash SMP NR_CPUS=2048 NUMA pSeries Modules linked in: CPU: 7 PID: 1 Comm: swapper/0 Not tainted 6.3.0-rc5-150500.34-default+ #2 5c90a668b6bbd142599890245c2fb5de19d7d28a Hardware name: IBM,9009-42G POWER9 (raw) 0x4e0202 0xf000005 of:IBM,FW950.40 (VL950_099) hv:phyp pSeries NIP: c000000001269d90 LR: c0000000004c57d4 CTR: 0000000000000000 REGS: c000000003632c30 TRAP: 0300 Not tainted (6.3.0-rc5-150500.34-default+) MSR: 8000000000009033 <SF,EE,ME,IR,DR,RI,LE> CR: 24842228 XER: 00000000 CFAR: c0000000004c57d0 DAR: c00c000100400038 DSISR: 42000000 IRQMASK: 0 .... NIP [c000000001269d90] __init_single_page.isra.74+0x14/0x4c LR [c0000000004c57d4] __init_zone_device_page+0x44/0xd0 Call Trace: [c000000003632ed0] [c000000003632f60] 0xc000000003632f60 (unreliable) [c000000003632f10] [c0000000004c5ca0] memmap_init_zone_device+0x170/0x250 [c000000003632fe0] [c0000000005575f8] memremap_pages+0x2c8/0x7f0 [c0000000036330c0] [c000000000557b5c] devm_memremap_pages+0x3c/0xa0 [c000000003633100] [c000000000d458a8] dev_dax_probe+0x108/0x3e0 [c0000000036331a0] [c000000000d41430] dax_bus_probe+0xb0/0x140 [c0000000036331d0] [c000000000cef27c] really_probe+0x19c/0x520 [c000000003633260] [c000000000cef6b4] __driver_probe_device+0xb4/0x230 [c0000000036332e0] [c000000000cef888] driver_probe_device+0x58/0x120 [c000000003633320] [c000000000cefa6c] __device_attach_driver+0x11c/0x1e0 [c0000000036333a0] [c000000000cebc58] bus_for_each_drv+0xa8/0x130 [c000000003633400] [c000000000ceefcc] __device_attach+0x15c/0x250 [c0000000036334a0] [c000000000ced458] bus_probe_device+0x108/0x110 [c0000000036334f0] [c000000000ce92dc] device_add+0x7fc/0xa10 [c0000000036335b0] [c000000000d447c8] devm_create_dev_dax+0x1d8/0x530 [c000000003633640] [c000000000d46b60] __dax_pmem_probe+0x200/0x270 [c0000000036337b0] [c000000000d46bf0] dax_pmem_probe+0x20/0x70 [c0000000036337d0] [c000000000d2279c] nvdimm_bus_probe+0xac/0x2b0 [c000000003633860] [c000000000cef27c] really_probe+0x19c/0x520 [c0000000036338f0] [c000000000cef6b4] __driver_probe_device+0xb4/0x230 [c000000003633970] [c000000000cef888] driver_probe_device+0x58/0x120 [c0000000036339b0] [c000000000cefd08] __driver_attach+0x1d8/0x240 [c000000003633a30] [c000000000cebb04] bus_for_each_dev+0xb4/0x130 [c000000003633a90] [c000000000cee564] driver_attach+0x34/0x50 [c000000003633ab0] [c000000000ced878] bus_add_driver+0x218/0x300 [c000000003633b40] [c000000000cf1144] driver_register+0xa4/0x1b0 [c000000003633bb0] [c000000000d21a0c] __nd_driver_register+0x5c/0x100 [c000000003633c10] [c00000000206a2e8] dax_pmem_init+0x34/0x48 [c000000003633c30] [c0000000000132d0] do_one_initcall+0x60/0x320 [c000000003633d00] [c0000000020051b0] kernel_init_freeable+0x360/0x400 [c000000003633de0] [c000000000013764] kernel_init+0x34/0x1d0 [c000000003633e50] [c00000000000de14] ret_from_kernel_thread+0x5c/0x64

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.1.184, 6.3.5, 6.4
  • linux Debian 12 6.1.187-1
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13 6.3.7-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2023-53706

  • kernel RHEL 9 5.14.0-362.8.1.el9_3
  • rv RHEL 9 5.14.0-362.8.1.el9_3
  • perf RHEL 9 5.14.0-362.8.1.el9_3
  • rtla RHEL 9 5.14.0-362.8.1.el9_3
  • bpftool RHEL 9 7.2.0-362.8.1.el9_3
  • libperf RHEL 9 5.14.0-362.8.1.el9_3
  • kernel-rt RHEL 9 5.14.0-362.8.1.el9_3
  • kernel-64k RHEL 9 5.14.0-362.8.1.el9_3

red hat advisories RHSA-2023:6583

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-2023-53706 updated cvss 5.8

kernel: mm/vmemmap/devdax: fix kernel crash when probing devdax devices

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 kernel-rt, kernel-rt-kvm, kernel-rt-trace, kernel-rt-debug-kvm, kernel-rt-trace-kvm 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
    affected: workaround, no fix available
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-tools, +3 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-core, kernel-tools, python3-perf, +17 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

0.21% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 11% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Technology feeds

References

Sources

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