Security Resilience

CVE-2023-52933

Memory Safety in Linux Kernel 4.4.258 – 4.5

Published
27 March 2025
Modified
28 October 2025
Patch / advisory
CVSS Score v3.1 5.5
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
EPSS Score 0.0027 18th percentile
Risk Priority 42 floored blend · peak EPSS

CVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.

Summary

CVE-2023-52933 is a medium-severity Integer Overflow or Wraparound (CWE-190) vulnerability in Linux Linux Kernel. Its CVSS base score is 5.5 (Medium).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique LSA Secrets (T1003.004); 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 SA-11 (Developer Testing and Evaluation) and SA-8 (Security and Privacy Engineering Principles) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: Squashfs: fix handling and sanity checking of xattr_ids count A Sysbot [1] corrupted filesystem exposes two flaws in the handling and sanity checking of the xattr_ids count in the filesystem.…

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Both of these flaws cause computation overflow due to incorrect typing. In the corrupted filesystem the xattr_ids value is 4294967071, which stored in a signed variable becomes the negative number -225. Flaw 1 (64-bit systems only): The signed integer xattr_ids variable causes sign extension. This causes variable overflow in the SQUASHFS_XATTR_*(A) macros. The variable is first multiplied by sizeof(struct squashfs_xattr_id) where the type of the sizeof operator is "unsigned long". On a 64-bit system this is 64-bits in size, and causes the negative number to be sign extended and widened to 64-bits and then become unsigned. This produces the very large number 18446744073709548016 or 2^64 - 3600. This number when rounded up by SQUASHFS_METADATA_SIZE - 1 (8191 bytes) and divided by SQUASHFS_METADATA_SIZE overflows and produces a length of 0 (stored in len). Flaw 2 (32-bit systems only): On a 32-bit system the integer variable is not widened by the unsigned long type of the sizeof operator (32-bits), and the signedness of the variable has no effect due it always being treated as unsigned. The above corrupted xattr_ids value of 4294967071, when multiplied overflows and produces the number 4294963696 or 2^32 - 3400. This number when rounded up by SQUASHFS_METADATA_SIZE - 1 (8191 bytes) and divided by SQUASHFS_METADATA_SIZE overflows again and produces a length of 0. The effect of the 0 length computation: In conjunction with the corrupted xattr_ids field, the filesystem also has a corrupted xattr_table_start value, where it matches the end of filesystem value of 850. This causes the following sanity check code to fail because the incorrectly computed len of 0 matches the incorrect size of the table reported by the superblock (0 bytes). len = SQUASHFS_XATTR_BLOCK_BYTES(*xattr_ids); indexes = SQUASHFS_XATTR_BLOCKS(*xattr_ids); /* * The computed size of the index table (len bytes) should exactly * match the table start and end points */ start = table_start + sizeof(*id_table); end = msblk->bytes_used; if (len != (end - start)) return ERR_PTR(-EINVAL); Changing the xattr_ids variable to be "usigned int" fixes the flaw on a 64-bit system. This relies on the fact the computation is widened by the unsigned long type of the sizeof operator. Casting the variable to u64 in the above macro fixes this flaw on a 32-bit system. It also means 64-bit systems do not implicitly rely on the type of the sizeof operator to widen the computation. [1] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/000000000000cd44f005f1a0f17f@google.com/

CWE(s)

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques

T1003.004 LSA Secrets Credential Access
Adversaries with SYSTEM access to a host may attempt to access Local Security Authority (LSA) secrets, which can contain a variety of different credential materials, such as credentials for service accounts.
T1003.005 Cached Domain Credentials Credential Access
Adversaries may attempt to access cached domain credentials used to allow authentication to occur in the event a domain controller is unavailable.
T1003.006 DCSync Credential Access
Adversaries may attempt to access credentials and other sensitive information by abusing a Windows Domain Controller's application programming interface (API)(Citation: Microsoft DRSR Dec 2017) (Citation: Microsoft GetNCCChanges) (Citati…
T1003.008 /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow Credential Access
Adversaries may attempt to dump the contents of <code>/etc/passwd</code> and <code>/etc/shadow</code> to enable offline password cracking.
T1006 Direct Volume Access Stealth
Adversaries may directly access a volume to bypass file access controls and file system monitoring.
T1008 Fallback Channels Command And Control
Adversaries may use fallback or alternate communication channels if the primary channel is compromised or inaccessible in order to maintain reliable command and control and to avoid data transfer thresholds.
Derived from this CVE’s CWE(s) via the direct CWE→ATT&CK cross-walk.

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Affected Assets

linux
linux kernel
5.11, 6.2 · 4.4.258 — 4.5 · 4.9.258 — 4.10 · 4.14.222 — 4.14.306

Mitigating Controls

Control response

Prevent
Stop it (NIST 800-53)

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Detect
Catch it (NIST detect / respond)

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Harden
Shrink the surface (DISA STIG)

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Validate
Prove the fix (OWASP ASVS)
  • V5.2.6

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

Developer testing and evaluation (static analysis, fuzzing, unit tests) directly finds integer overflow defects before deployment.

Secure engineering principles require use of safe arithmetic constructs or language features that structurally eliminate integer overflow during calculation.

Input validation enforces bounds on values before arithmetic, stopping the conditions that trigger overflow or wraparound.

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.

PR.PS-06 partial match
blocks

Secure SDLC practices directly require use of safe arithmetic, bounds checks, and testing that prevent integer overflows.

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.

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References