CVE-2023-53323
Linux Kernel 5.15 – 6.1.40
Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/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-2023-53323 is a medium-severity Reachable Assertion (CWE-617) vulnerability in Linux Linux Kernel. Its CVSS base score is 5.5 (Medium).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Data Obfuscation (T1001); ranked at the 3th 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
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2023-59938
Vulnerability Data
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ext2/dax: Fix ext2_setsize when len is page aligned PAGE_ALIGN(x) macro gives the next highest value which is multiple of pagesize. But if x is already page aligned then it simply…
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returns x. So, if x passed is 0 in dax_zero_range() function, that means the length gets passed as 0 to ->iomap_begin(). In ext2 it then calls ext2_get_blocks -> max_blocks as 0 and hits bug_on here in ext2_get_blocks(). BUG_ON(maxblocks == 0); Instead we should be calling dax_truncate_page() here which takes care of it. i.e. it only calls dax_zero_range if the offset is not page/block aligned. This can be easily triggered with following on fsdax mounted pmem device. dd if=/dev/zero of=file count=1 bs=512 truncate -s 0 file [79.525838] EXT2-fs (pmem0): DAX enabled. Warning: EXPERIMENTAL, use at your own risk [79.529376] ext2 filesystem being mounted at /mnt1/test supports timestamps until 2038 (0x7fffffff) [93.793207] ------------[ cut here ]------------ [93.795102] kernel BUG at fs/ext2/inode.c:637! [93.796904] invalid opcode: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP PTI [93.798659] CPU: 0 PID: 1192 Comm: truncate Not tainted 6.3.0-rc2-xfstests-00056-g131086faa369 #139 [93.806459] RIP: 0010:ext2_get_blocks.constprop.0+0x524/0x610 <...> [93.835298] Call Trace: [93.836253] <TASK> [93.837103] ? lock_acquire+0xf8/0x110 [93.838479] ? d_lookup+0x69/0xd0 [93.839779] ext2_iomap_begin+0xa7/0x1c0 [93.841154] iomap_iter+0xc7/0x150 [93.842425] dax_zero_range+0x6e/0xa0 [93.843813] ext2_setsize+0x176/0x1b0 [93.845164] ext2_setattr+0x151/0x200 [93.846467] notify_change+0x341/0x4e0 [93.847805] ? lock_acquire+0xf8/0x110 [93.849143] ? do_truncate+0x74/0xe0 [93.850452] ? do_truncate+0x84/0xe0 [93.851739] do_truncate+0x84/0xe0 [93.852974] do_sys_ftruncate+0x2b4/0x2f0 [93.854404] do_syscall_64+0x3f/0x90 [93.855789] entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x72/0xdc
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Developer testing and evaluation finds reachable assertions during development.
Security engineering principles discourage use of assertions for handling untrusted input.
Validating untrusted inputs structurally prevents attacker data from reaching and triggering assertions.
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.
Runtime monitoring of software can detect assertion-triggered crashes as adverse events.
Vulnerability identification processes can discover and record reachable-assertion flaws before deployment.
Secure SDLC practices directly prevent unsafe assertions from being coded in reachable paths.
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.