CVE-2023-52501

HIGH
Published Mar 2, 2024 Modified Jan 13, 2025 CWE-125

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ring-buffer: Do not attempt to read past "commit" When iterating over the ring buffer while the ring buffer is active, the writer can corrupt the reader. There's barriers to help detect this and handle it, but that code missed the case where the last event was at the very end of the page and has only 4 bytes left. The checks to detect the corruption by the writer to reads needs to see the length of the event. If the length in the first 4 bytes is zero then the length is stored in the second 4 bytes. But if the writer is in the process of updating that code, there's a small window where the length in the first 4 bytes could be zero even though the length is only 4 bytes. That will cause rb_event_length() to read the next 4 bytes which could happen to be off the allocated page. To protect against this, fail immediately if the next event pointer is less than 8 bytes from the end of the commit (last byte of data), as all events must be a minimum of 8 bytes anyway.

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CVSS v3.1 Score

7.1
HIGH
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:H

Weakness Type (CWE)

CWE-125 Out-of-bounds Read

Affected Products

Vendor Product
linux linux_kernel
linux linux_kernel
linux linux_kernel
linux linux_kernel
linux linux_kernel

References

Frequently Asked Questions

What is CVE-2023-52501? +
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ring-buffer: Do not attempt to read past "commit" When iterating over the ring buffer while the ring buffer is active, the writer can corrupt the reader. There's barriers to help detect this and handle it, but that code missed the case where the last event was at the very end of the page and has only 4 bytes left. The checks to detect the corruption by the writer to reads needs to see the length of the event. If the length in the first 4 bytes is zero then the length is stored in the second 4 bytes. But if the writer is in the process of updating that code, there's a small window where the length in the first 4 bytes could be zero even though the length is only 4 bytes. That will cause rb_event_length() to read the next 4 bytes which could happen to be off the allocated page. To protect against this, fail immediately if the next event pointer is less than 8 bytes from the end of the commit (last byte of data), as all events must be a minimum of 8 bytes anyway. It has a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.1 (HIGH).
How severe is CVE-2023-52501? +
CVE-2023-52501 has a CVSS v3.1 score of 7.1 out of 10, rated HIGH. This is a high-severity vulnerability that should be prioritized for patching.
What products are affected by CVE-2023-52501? +
CVE-2023-52501 affects products from linux, specifically: linux_kernel. Check the affected products table above for specific version ranges.
How do I check if I'm vulnerable to CVE-2023-52501? +
You can use Secably's free Website Scanner to check your website for known vulnerabilities. For infrastructure scanning, use the Port Scanner to identify exposed services that may be affected. Check the vendor advisories linked above for specific patch and version information.

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