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Fencer Vulns
no cvss —

CVE-2023-53815 json

posix-timers: Prevent RT livelock in itimer_delete()

published 2025-12-09 11 mo ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2023-60091

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 8%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

posix-timers: Prevent RT livelock in itimer_delete()

itimer_delete() has a retry loop when the timer is concurrently expired. On non-RT kernels this just spin-waits until the timer callback has completed, except for posix CPU timers which have HAVE_POSIX_CPU_TIMERS_TASK_WORK enabled.

In that case and on RT kernels the existing task could live lock when preempting the task which does the timer delivery.

Replace spin_unlock() with an invocation of timer_wait_running() to handle it the same way as the other retry loops in the posix timer code.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 5.10.188, 5.15.121, 6.1.39, 6.3.13, 6.4.4, 6.5
  • linux Debian 12 6.1.52-1
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13 6.4.4-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2023-53815

  • linux Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-86.96
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1047.52
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1044.52
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1044.49
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1040.43
  • linux-kvm Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1044.49
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1049.56
  • linux-gkeop Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1030.35

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53815

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 Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-40.1
  • kernel-source-rt Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-40.1
  • kernel-source Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-39.1
  • kernel-default Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-39.1
  • kernel-kvmsmall Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-39.1
  • kernel-default-base Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-39.1.21.16
  • kernel-64kb SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.53.28.1
  • kernel-syms SLE Module for Development Tools 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.53.28.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2026:20845-1SUSE-SU-2026:20876-1SUSE-SU-2026:20477-1SUSE-SU-2026:20498-1SUSE-SU-2026:0315-1SUSE-SU-2026:0293-1

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-2023-53815 updated cvss 4.7

kernel: posix-timers: Prevent RT livelock in itimer_delete()

  • 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: workaround, no fix available
  • 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

Exploit prediction

0.19% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 8% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

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.