CVE-2023-52975
Published: 27 March 2025
Summary
CVE-2023-52975 is a high-severity Use After Free (CWE-416) vulnerability in Linux Linux Kernel. Its CVSS base score is 7.8 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (T1068); ranked at the 5.9th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 SI-2 (Flaw Remediation) and CM-7 (Least Functionality).
Deeper analysis
CVE-2023-52975 is a use-after-free (UAF) vulnerability in the Linux kernel's iSCSI TCP implementation within the SCSI subsystem. The issue occurs during an iSCSI session logout, where concurrent access to the shost ipaddress attribute by another task can trigger a UAF, as detected by KASAN. This leads to invalid memory access, such as attempting to acquire a spinlock on freed memory, affecting Linux kernels that support iSCSI over TCP, particularly in environments using software iSCSI initiators.
A local attacker with low privileges can exploit this vulnerability with low complexity and no user interaction required. Exploitation involves creating an iSCSI session via netlink messages, triggering a logout in one task to free the session structure, while simultaneously reading the ipaddress sysfs attribute in another task, such as via a tool like 'cat'. Successful exploitation can result in high impacts on confidentiality, integrity, and availability, potentially leading to kernel crashes, data corruption, or arbitrary code execution, as indicated by the CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.8 (AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H).
Mitigation requires applying upstream kernel patches, such as the fixes committed in stable trees at https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/0af745fddefbd56198f4f35eb309215ee5f9e21e, https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/17b738590b97fb3fc287289971d1519ff9b875a1, https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/6f1d64b13097e85abda0f91b5638000afc5f9a06, and https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/8859687f5b242c0b057461df0a9ff51d5500783b. Security practitioners should update affected Linux distributions and kernels to versions incorporating these commits, and consider disabling iSCSI TCP if not required.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2023-59745
Vulnerability details
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: scsi: iscsi_tcp: Fix UAF during logout when accessing the shost ipaddress Bug report and analysis from Ding Hui. During iSCSI session logout, if another task accesses the shost ipaddress attr,…
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we can get a KASAN UAF report like this: [ 276.942144] BUG: KASAN: use-after-free in _raw_spin_lock_bh+0x78/0xe0 [ 276.942535] Write of size 4 at addr ffff8881053b45b8 by task cat/4088 [ 276.943511] CPU: 2 PID: 4088 Comm: cat Tainted: G E 6.1.0-rc8+ #3 [ 276.943997] Hardware name: VMware, Inc. VMware Virtual Platform/440BX Desktop Reference Platform, BIOS 6.00 11/12/2020 [ 276.944470] Call Trace: [ 276.944943] <TASK> [ 276.945397] dump_stack_lvl+0x34/0x48 [ 276.945887] print_address_description.constprop.0+0x86/0x1e7 [ 276.946421] print_report+0x36/0x4f [ 276.947358] kasan_report+0xad/0x130 [ 276.948234] kasan_check_range+0x35/0x1c0 [ 276.948674] _raw_spin_lock_bh+0x78/0xe0 [ 276.949989] iscsi_sw_tcp_host_get_param+0xad/0x2e0 [iscsi_tcp] [ 276.951765] show_host_param_ISCSI_HOST_PARAM_IPADDRESS+0xe9/0x130 [scsi_transport_iscsi] [ 276.952185] dev_attr_show+0x3f/0x80 [ 276.953005] sysfs_kf_seq_show+0x1fb/0x3e0 [ 276.953401] seq_read_iter+0x402/0x1020 [ 276.954260] vfs_read+0x532/0x7b0 [ 276.955113] ksys_read+0xed/0x1c0 [ 276.955952] do_syscall_64+0x38/0x90 [ 276.956347] entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x63/0xcd [ 276.956769] RIP: 0033:0x7f5d3a679222 [ 276.957161] Code: c0 e9 b2 fe ff ff 50 48 8d 3d 32 c0 0b 00 e8 a5 fe 01 00 0f 1f 44 00 00 f3 0f 1e fa 64 8b 04 25 18 00 00 00 85 c0 75 10 0f 05 <48> 3d 00 f0 ff ff 77 56 c3 0f 1f 44 00 00 48 83 ec 28 48 89 54 24 [ 276.958009] RSP: 002b:00007ffc864d16a8 EFLAGS: 00000246 ORIG_RAX: 0000000000000000 [ 276.958431] RAX: ffffffffffffffda RBX: 0000000000020000 RCX: 00007f5d3a679222 [ 276.958857] RDX: 0000000000020000 RSI: 00007f5d3a4fe000 RDI: 0000000000000003 [ 276.959281] RBP: 00007f5d3a4fe000 R08: 00000000ffffffff R09: 0000000000000000 [ 276.959682] R10: 0000000000000022 R11: 0000000000000246 R12: 0000000000020000 [ 276.960126] R13: 0000000000000003 R14: 0000000000000000 R15: 0000557a26dada58 [ 276.960536] </TASK> [ 276.961357] Allocated by task 2209: [ 276.961756] kasan_save_stack+0x1e/0x40 [ 276.962170] kasan_set_track+0x21/0x30 [ 276.962557] __kasan_kmalloc+0x7e/0x90 [ 276.962923] __kmalloc+0x5b/0x140 [ 276.963308] iscsi_alloc_session+0x28/0x840 [scsi_transport_iscsi] [ 276.963712] iscsi_session_setup+0xda/0xba0 [libiscsi] [ 276.964078] iscsi_sw_tcp_session_create+0x1fd/0x330 [iscsi_tcp] [ 276.964431] iscsi_if_create_session.isra.0+0x50/0x260 [scsi_transport_iscsi] [ 276.964793] iscsi_if_recv_msg+0xc5a/0x2660 [scsi_transport_iscsi] [ 276.965153] iscsi_if_rx+0x198/0x4b0 [scsi_transport_iscsi] [ 276.965546] netlink_unicast+0x4d5/0x7b0 [ 276.965905] netlink_sendmsg+0x78d/0xc30 [ 276.966236] sock_sendmsg+0xe5/0x120 [ 276.966576] ____sys_sendmsg+0x5fe/0x860 [ 276.966923] ___sys_sendmsg+0xe0/0x170 [ 276.967300] __sys_sendmsg+0xc8/0x170 [ 276.967666] do_syscall_64+0x38/0x90 [ 276.968028] entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x63/0xcd [ 276.968773] Freed by task 2209: [ 276.969111] kasan_save_stack+0x1e/0x40 [ 276.969449] kasan_set_track+0x21/0x30 [ 276.969789] kasan_save_free_info+0x2a/0x50 [ 276.970146] __kasan_slab_free+0x106/0x190 [ 276.970470] __kmem_cache_free+0x133/0x270 [ 276.970816] device_release+0x98/0x210 [ 276.971145] kobject_cleanup+0x101/0x360 [ 276.971462] iscsi_session_teardown+0x3fb/0x530 [libiscsi] [ 276.971775] iscsi_sw_tcp_session_destroy+0xd8/0x130 [iscsi_tcp] [ 276.972143] iscsi_if_recv_msg+0x1bf1/0x2660 [scsi_transport_iscsi] [ 276.972485] iscsi_if_rx+0x198/0x4b0 [scsi_transport_iscsi] [ 276.972808] netlink_unicast+0x4d5/0x7b0 [ 276.973201] netlink_sendmsg+0x78d/0xc30 [ 276.973544] sock_sendmsg+0xe5/0x120 [ 276.973864] ____sys_sendmsg+0x5fe/0x860 [ 276.974248] ___sys_ ---truncated---
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Local kernel use-after-free vulnerability enabling arbitrary code execution by low-privileged attackers, directly facilitating privilege escalation.
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Requires timely identification, reporting, and correction of the kernel UAF flaw in iSCSI TCP logout handling via patching.
Implements kernel memory protections such as KASLR and SMEP that hinder exploitation of the use-after-free vulnerability during concurrent shost ipaddress access.
Restricts system to least functionality by disabling unnecessary iSCSI TCP if not required, preventing exposure to the logout race condition.