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Fencer Vulns
no cvss —

CVE-2023-54045 json

audit: fix possible soft lockup in __audit_inode_child()

published 2025-12-24 10 mo ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2023-60281

cvss
—
not scored
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.3%
EPSS 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 21%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

audit: fix possible soft lockup in __audit_inode_child()

Tracefs or debugfs maybe cause hundreds to thousands of PATH records, too many PATH records maybe cause soft lockup.

For example: 1. CONFIG_KASAN=y && CONFIG_PREEMPTION=n 2. auditctl -a exit,always -S open -k key 3. sysctl -w kernel.watchdog_thresh=5 4. mkdir /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/instances/test

There may be a soft lockup as follows: watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#45 stuck for 7s! [mkdir:15498] Kernel panic - not syncing: softlockup: hung tasks Call trace: dump_backtrace+0x0/0x30c show_stack+0x20/0x30 dump_stack+0x11c/0x174 panic+0x27c/0x494 watchdog_timer_fn+0x2bc/0x390 __run_hrtimer+0x148/0x4fc __hrtimer_run_queues+0x154/0x210 hrtimer_interrupt+0x2c4/0x760 arch_timer_handler_phys+0x48/0x60 handle_percpu_devid_irq+0xe0/0x340 __handle_domain_irq+0xbc/0x130 gic_handle_irq+0x78/0x460 el1_irq+0xb8/0x140 __audit_inode_child+0x240/0x7bc tracefs_create_file+0x1b8/0x2a0 trace_create_file+0x18/0x50 event_create_dir+0x204/0x30c __trace_add_new_event+0xac/0x100 event_trace_add_tracer+0xa0/0x130 trace_array_create_dir+0x60/0x140 trace_array_create+0x1e0/0x370 instance_mkdir+0x90/0xd0 tracefs_syscall_mkdir+0x68/0xa0 vfs_mkdir+0x21c/0x34c do_mkdirat+0x1b4/0x1d4 __arm64_sys_mkdirat+0x4c/0x60 el0_svc_common.constprop.0+0xa8/0x240 do_el0_svc+0x8c/0xc0 el0_svc+0x20/0x30 el0_sync_handler+0xb0/0xb4 el0_sync+0x160/0x180

Therefore, we add cond_resched() to __audit_inode_child() to fix it.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 4.14.326, 4.19.295, 5.4.257, 5.10.195, 5.15.132, 6.1.53, 6.4.16, 6.5.3, 6.6
  • linux Debian 12 6.1.55-1
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13 6.5.3-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2023-54045

  • linux Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-169.187
  • linux Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-94.104
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1116.126
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1053.58
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1120.129
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1051.59
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1050.55
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1063.68

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2023-54045

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-64kb SLES 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP4-ESPOS 5.14.21-150400.24.194.1
  • kernel-syms SLES for SAP 15 SP4, SLES 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP4-LTSS +1 more 5.14.21-150400.24.194.1
  • kernel-source SLES for SAP 15 SP4, SLES 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP4-LTSS +1 more 5.14.21-150400.24.194.1
  • kernel-default SLES for SAP 15 SP4, SLES 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.4 +5 more 5.14.21-150400.24.194.1
  • kernel-obs-build SLES for SAP 15 SP4, SLES 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP4-LTSS +1 more 5.14.21-150400.24.194.1
  • kernel-default-base SLES for SAP 15 SP4, SLES 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.4 +3 more 5.14.21-150400.24.194.1.150400.24.98.3

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2026:20845-1SUSE-SU-2026:20876-1SUSE-SU-2026:0617-1SUSE-SU-2026:20477-1SUSE-SU-2026:20498-1SUSE-SU-2026:0411-1

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-2023-54045 updated cvss 4.7

kernel: audit: fix possible soft lockup in __audit_inode_child()

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more 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 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

0.28% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 21% 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.