Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HCVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.
Summary
CVE-2023-52761 is a high-severity Uncontrolled Recursion (CWE-674) vulnerability in Linux Linux Kernel. Its CVSS base score is 7.8 (High).
Operationally, ranked at the 18th 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 SI-10 (Information Input Validation) and SC-5 (Denial-of-service Protection) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2023-59637
Vulnerability Data
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: riscv: VMAP_STACK overflow detection thread-safe commit 31da94c25aea ("riscv: add VMAP_STACK overflow detection") added support for CONFIG_VMAP_STACK. If overflow is detected, CPU switches to `shadow_stack` temporarily before switching finally to per-cpu…
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`overflow_stack`. If two CPUs/harts are racing and end up in over flowing kernel stack, one or both will end up corrupting each other state because `shadow_stack` is not per-cpu. This patch optimizes per-cpu overflow stack switch by directly picking per-cpu `overflow_stack` and gets rid of `shadow_stack`. Following are the changes in this patch - Defines an asm macro to obtain per-cpu symbols in destination register. - In entry.S, when overflow is detected, per-cpu overflow stack is located using per-cpu asm macro. Computing per-cpu symbol requires a temporary register. x31 is saved away into CSR_SCRATCH (CSR_SCRATCH is anyways zero since we're in kernel). Please see Links for additional relevant disccussion and alternative solution. Tested by `echo EXHAUST_STACK > /sys/kernel/debug/provoke-crash/DIRECT` Kernel crash log below Insufficient stack space to handle exception!/debug/provoke-crash/DIRECT Task stack: [0xff20000010a98000..0xff20000010a9c000] Overflow stack: [0xff600001f7d98370..0xff600001f7d99370] CPU: 1 PID: 205 Comm: bash Not tainted 6.1.0-rc2-00001-g328a1f96f7b9 #34 Hardware name: riscv-virtio,qemu (DT) epc : __memset+0x60/0xfc ra : recursive_loop+0x48/0xc6 [lkdtm] epc : ffffffff808de0e4 ra : ffffffff0163a752 sp : ff20000010a97e80 gp : ffffffff815c0330 tp : ff600000820ea280 t0 : ff20000010a97e88 t1 : 000000000000002e t2 : 3233206874706564 s0 : ff20000010a982b0 s1 : 0000000000000012 a0 : ff20000010a97e88 a1 : 0000000000000000 a2 : 0000000000000400 a3 : ff20000010a98288 a4 : 0000000000000000 a5 : 0000000000000000 a6 : fffffffffffe43f0 a7 : 00007fffffffffff s2 : ff20000010a97e88 s3 : ffffffff01644680 s4 : ff20000010a9be90 s5 : ff600000842ba6c0 s6 : 00aaaaaac29e42b0 s7 : 00fffffff0aa3684 s8 : 00aaaaaac2978040 s9 : 0000000000000065 s10: 00ffffff8a7cad10 s11: 00ffffff8a76a4e0 t3 : ffffffff815dbaf4 t4 : ffffffff815dbaf4 t5 : ffffffff815dbab8 t6 : ff20000010a9bb48 status: 0000000200000120 badaddr: ff20000010a97e88 cause: 000000000000000f Kernel panic - not syncing: Kernel stack overflow CPU: 1 PID: 205 Comm: bash Not tainted 6.1.0-rc2-00001-g328a1f96f7b9 #34 Hardware name: riscv-virtio,qemu (DT) Call Trace: [<ffffffff80006754>] dump_backtrace+0x30/0x38 [<ffffffff808de798>] show_stack+0x40/0x4c [<ffffffff808ea2a8>] dump_stack_lvl+0x44/0x5c [<ffffffff808ea2d8>] dump_stack+0x18/0x20 [<ffffffff808dec06>] panic+0x126/0x2fe [<ffffffff800065ea>] walk_stackframe+0x0/0xf0 [<ffffffff0163a752>] recursive_loop+0x48/0xc6 [lkdtm] SMP: stopping secondary CPUs ---[ end Kernel panic - not syncing: Kernel stack overflow ]---
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Input validation can reject or constrain data that would otherwise drive unbounded recursive calls.
DoS protection mechanisms limit the resource-exhaustion impact of uncontrolled recursion without eliminating the flaw.
System monitoring can observe anomalous resource consumption that signals runaway recursion after it begins.
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.
Secure development life cycle requires controls that prevent uncontrolled recursion through design and code review.
A.8.26 only requires that security requirements (including resilience against attacks such as buffer overflows) be identified and specified during development or acquisition; it does not itself enforce, implement, or prevent uncontrolled recursion from being exploitable in the resulting application.
A.8.27 mandates establishing and applying secure engineering principles (defense-in-depth, least privilege, security by design, input distrust, hardening, design reviews) but does not itself stop uncontrolled recursion from being introduced or from consuming excessive resources when present; the weakness can still be exploited.
Secure coding standards directly prohibit or constrain recursive constructs that could exhaust stack or memory.
Security testing in development can detect excessive recursion via static analysis or fuzzing.
Capacity management includes monitoring and limits that mitigate resource exhaustion from runaway recursion.
Hardening callouts derived
DISA STIG baselines are authored against specific weaknesses. Where this CVE cites a broad weakness class, the mapping is not asserted at that abstraction (owner ruling, 2026-09-25: grade only at Base and below), so no rule is shown here rather than a rule shown against the wrong grain.
- No fine-grained STIG row for CWE-674, a class-level weakness, and none of its children carries one either.