Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HSummary
CVE-2023-52622 is a medium-severity Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling (CWE-770) vulnerability in Linux Linux Kernel. Its CVSS base score is 5.5 (Medium).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Network Denial of Service (T1498); ranked at the 16th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to AC-10 (Concurrent Session Control) and SC-6 (Resource Availability) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2023-57246
Vulnerability Data
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ext4: avoid online resizing failures due to oversized flex bg When we online resize an ext4 filesystem with a oversized flexbg_size, mkfs.ext4 -F -G 67108864 $dev -b 4096 100M mount…
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$dev $dir resize2fs $dev 16G the following WARN_ON is triggered: ================================================================== WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 427 at mm/page_alloc.c:4402 __alloc_pages+0x411/0x550 Modules linked in: sg(E) CPU: 0 PID: 427 Comm: resize2fs Tainted: G E 6.6.0-rc5+ #314 RIP: 0010:__alloc_pages+0x411/0x550 Call Trace: <TASK> __kmalloc_large_node+0xa2/0x200 __kmalloc+0x16e/0x290 ext4_resize_fs+0x481/0xd80 __ext4_ioctl+0x1616/0x1d90 ext4_ioctl+0x12/0x20 __x64_sys_ioctl+0xf0/0x150 do_syscall_64+0x3b/0x90 ================================================================== This is because flexbg_size is too large and the size of the new_group_data array to be allocated exceeds MAX_ORDER. Currently, the minimum value of MAX_ORDER is 8, the minimum value of PAGE_SIZE is 4096, the corresponding maximum number of groups that can be allocated is: (PAGE_SIZE << MAX_ORDER) / sizeof(struct ext4_new_group_data) ≈ 21845 And the value that is down-aligned to the power of 2 is 16384. Therefore, this value is defined as MAX_RESIZE_BG, and the number of groups added each time does not exceed this value during resizing, and is added multiple times to complete the online resizing. The difference is that the metadata in a flex_bg may be more dispersed.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Control response
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- 5 hardening rules · 3 OS baselines
V15.4.4
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Directly enforces a hard limit on concurrent sessions, structurally preventing unbounded resource allocation.
Requires explicit allocation of resources by priority or quota, directly stopping unlimited allocation.
Imposes a limit on consecutive invalid attempts, preventing one specific class of unbounded resource consumption.
Reduces impact of resulting DoS events without preventing the underlying lack of allocation limits.
Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Monitoring capacity and taking action to maintain availability directly reduces unchecked resource allocation.
Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Baseline comparison of CPU, memory and bandwidth usage helps surface uncontrolled resource allocations before they cause service degradation.
Capacity projections and elasticity measures ensure that allocation requests are bounded and can be throttled, reducing the window in which an attacker can force unbounded resource reservations.
Defining retention periods and deletion schedules for backup copies prevents indefinite accumulation of data on storage media without corresponding resource-management controls.
Architectural redundancy and automatic failover limit the impact of an attacker who forces excessive allocations, because spare capacity can absorb the load until the primary instance recovers.
Documented incident response procedures that include activation of continuity plans and controlled recovery help ensure that resource consumption triggered by an incident is bounded and managed rather than left unbounded.
Mandating tested continuity procedures that preserve or replace resource-limiting controls prevents an attacker from exploiting the absence of throttling mechanisms during an outage.
Hardening callouts derived
Configuration rules from DISA STIG baselines that bear on weaknesses of the type cited by this CVE. Each rule is shown with the relationship its mapping actually records, against the CWE it was authored against. Derived via CVE→CWE over `controls_xwalks` (authoritative rows only; rows rated `none` are excluded).
Oracle Linux 8 (2 rules)
- V-248552 OL 8 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic terminate after becoming unresponsive. prevents CWE-770
- V-248553 OL 8 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic are terminated after 10 minutes of becoming unresponsive. prevents CWE-770
Oracle Linux 9 (2 rules)
- V-271710 OL 9 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic are terminated after 10 minutes of becoming unresponsive. prevents CWE-770
- V-271709 OL 9 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic terminate after becoming unresponsive. prevents CWE-770
RHEL 8 (1 rule)
- V-230244 RHEL 8 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic terminate after becoming unresponsive. prevents CWE-770