CVE-2023-54020

Published Dec 24, 2025 Modified Apr 15, 2026

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: dmaengine: sf-pdma: pdma_desc memory leak fix Commit b2cc5c465c2c ("dmaengine: sf-pdma: Add multithread support for a DMA channel") changed sf_pdma_prep_dma_memcpy() to unconditionally allocate a new sf_pdma_desc each time it is called. The driver previously recycled descs, by checking the in_use flag, only allocating additional descs if the existing one was in use. This logic was removed in commit b2cc5c465c2c ("dmaengine: sf-pdma: Add multithread support for a DMA channel"), but sf_pdma_free_desc() was not changed to handle the new behaviour. As a result, each time sf_pdma_prep_dma_memcpy() is called, the previous descriptor is leaked, over time leading to memory starvation: unreferenced object 0xffffffe008447300 (size 192): comm "irq/39-mchp_dsc", pid 343, jiffies 4294906910 (age 981.200s) hex dump (first 32 bytes): 00 00 00 ff 00 00 00 00 b8 c1 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 00 00 70 08 10 00 00 00 00 00 00 c0 00 00 00 00 ..p............. backtrace: [<00000000064a04f4>] kmemleak_alloc+0x1e/0x28 [<00000000018927a7>] kmem_cache_alloc+0x11e/0x178 [<000000002aea8d16>] sf_pdma_prep_dma_memcpy+0x40/0x112 Add the missing kfree() to sf_pdma_free_desc(), and remove the redundant in_use flag.

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References

Frequently Asked Questions

What is CVE-2023-54020? +
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: dmaengine: sf-pdma: pdma_desc memory leak fix Commit b2cc5c465c2c ("dmaengine: sf-pdma: Add multithread support for a DMA channel") changed sf_pdma_prep_dma_memcpy() to unconditionally allocate a new sf_pdma_desc each time it is called. The driver previously recycled descs, by checking the in_use flag, only allocating additional descs if the existing one was in use. This logic was removed in commit b2cc5c465c2c ("dmaengine: sf-pdma: Add multithread support for a DMA channel"), but sf_pdma_free_desc() was not changed to handle the new behaviour. As a result, each time sf_pdma_prep_dma_memcpy() is called, the previous descriptor is leaked, over time leading to memory starvation: unreferenced object 0xffffffe008447300 (size 192): comm "irq/39-mchp_dsc", pid 343, jiffies 4294906910 (age 981.200s) hex dump (first 32 bytes): 00 00 00 ff 00 00 00 00 b8 c1 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 00 00 70 08 10 00 00 00 00 00 00 c0 00 00 00 00 ..p............. backtrace: [<00000000064a04f4>] kmemleak_alloc+0x1e/0x28 [<00000000018927a7>] kmem_cache_alloc+0x11e/0x178 [<000000002aea8d16>] sf_pdma_prep_dma_memcpy+0x40/0x112 Add the missing kfree() to sf_pdma_free_desc(), and remove the redundant in_use flag.
How do I check if I'm vulnerable to CVE-2023-54020? +
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