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Fencer Vulns
high 7.8

CVE-2023-54139 json

tracing/user_events: Ensure write index cannot be negative

published 2025-12-24 10 mo ago modified 2026-08-05 3 mo ago also EUVD-2023-60306

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 4%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

tracing/user_events: Ensure write index cannot be negative

The write index indicates which event the data is for and accesses a per-file array. The index is passed by user processes during write() calls as the first 4 bytes. Ensure that it cannot be negative by returning -EINVAL to prevent out of bounds accesses.

Update ftrace self-test to ensure this occurs properly.

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-2023-54139

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-2023-54139 updated cvss 7.8

kernel: Linux kernel: Privilege escalation via out-of-bounds write in tracing/user_events

  • 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 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 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

0.15% 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
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.