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Fencer Vulns
high 7.8

CVE-2023-53836 json

bpf, sockmap: Fix skb refcnt race after locking changes

published 2025-12-09 11 mo ago modified 2026-10-15 24 d ago also EUVD-2023-60160

cvss
7.8
version 3.1, CNA
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:

bpf, sockmap: Fix skb refcnt race after locking changes

There is a race where skb's from the sk_psock_backlog can be referenced after userspace side has already skb_consumed() the sk_buff and its refcnt dropped to zer0 causing use after free.

The flow is the following:

while ((skb = skb_peek(&psock->ingress_skb)) sk_psock_handle_Skb(psock, skb, ..., ingress) if (!ingress) ... sk_psock_skb_ingress sk_psock_skb_ingress_enqueue(skb) msg->skb = skb sk_psock_queue_msg(psock, msg) skb_dequeue(&psock->ingress_skb)

The sk_psock_queue_msg() puts the msg on the ingress_msg queue. This is what the application reads when recvmsg() is called. An application can read this anytime after the msg is placed on the queue. The recvmsg hook will also read msg->skb and then after user space reads the msg will call consume_skb(skb) on it effectively free'ing it.

But, the race is in above where backlog queue still has a reference to the skb and calls skb_dequeue(). If the skb_dequeue happens after the user reads and free's the skb we have a use after free.

The !ingress case does not suffer from this problem because it uses sendmsg_*(sk, msg) which does not pass the sk_buff further down the stack.

The following splat was observed with 'test_progs -t sockmap_listen':

[ 1022.710250][ T2556] general protection fault, ... [...] [ 1022.712830][ T2556] Workqueue: events sk_psock_backlog [ 1022.713262][ T2556] RIP: 0010:skb_dequeue+0x4c/0x80 [ 1022.713653][ T2556] Code: ... [...] [ 1022.720699][ T2556] Call Trace: [ 1022.720984][ T2556] <TASK> [ 1022.721254][ T2556] ? die_addr+0x32/0x80^M [ 1022.721589][ T2556] ? exc_general_protection+0x25a/0x4b0 [ 1022.722026][ T2556] ? asm_exc_general_protection+0x22/0x30 [ 1022.722489][ T2556] ? skb_dequeue+0x4c/0x80 [ 1022.722854][ T2556] sk_psock_backlog+0x27a/0x300 [ 1022.723243][ T2556] process_one_work+0x2a7/0x5b0 [ 1022.723633][ T2556] worker_thread+0x4f/0x3a0 [ 1022.723998][ T2556] ? __pfx_worker_thread+0x10/0x10 [ 1022.724386][ T2556] kthread+0xfd/0x130 [ 1022.724709][ T2556] ? __pfx_kthread+0x10/0x10 [ 1022.725066][ T2556] ret_from_fork+0x2d/0x50 [ 1022.725409][ T2556] ? __pfx_kthread+0x10/0x10 [ 1022.725799][ T2556] ret_from_fork_asm+0x1b/0x30 [ 1022.726201][ T2556] </TASK>

To fix we add an skb_get() before passing the skb to be enqueued in the engress queue. This bumps the skb->users refcnt so that consume_skb() and kfree_skb will not immediately free the sk_buff. With this we can be sure the skb is still around when we do the dequeue. Then we just need to decrement the refcnt or free the skb in the backlog case which we do by calling kfree_skb() on the ingress case as well as the sendmsg case.

Before locking change from fixes tag we had the sock locked so we couldn't race with user and there was no issue here.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 5.15.189, 6.1.54, 6.5.4, 6.6
  • linux Debian 12 6.1.55-1
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13 6.5.6-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2023-53836

  • linux Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-156.166
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1092.99
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1092.101
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1089.95
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1086.89
  • linux-kvm Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1088.93
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1096.105
  • linux-gkeop Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1075.83

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53836

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-2023-53836 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: bpf, sockmap: Fix skb refcnt race after locking changes

  • 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
total
Assessed
24 d ago

Exploit prediction

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

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 7.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

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.