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-2023-53576 is a medium-severity NULL Pointer Dereference (CWE-476) vulnerability in Linux Linux Kernel. Its CVSS base score is 5.5 (Medium).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique OS Credential Dumping (T1003); 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-15 (Development Process, Standards, and Tools) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2025-32317
Vulnerability Data
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: null_blk: Always check queue mode setting from configfs Make sure to check device queue mode in the null_validate_conf() and return error for NULL_Q_RQ as we don't allow legacy I/O path,…
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without this patch we get OOPs when queue mode is set to 1 from configfs, following are repro steps :- modprobe null_blk nr_devices=0 mkdir config/nullb/nullb0 echo 1 > config/nullb/nullb0/memory_backed echo 4096 > config/nullb/nullb0/blocksize echo 20480 > config/nullb/nullb0/size echo 1 > config/nullb/nullb0/queue_mode echo 1 > config/nullb/nullb0/power Entering kdb (current=0xffff88810acdd080, pid 2372) on processor 42 Oops: (null) due to oops @ 0xffffffffc041c329 CPU: 42 PID: 2372 Comm: sh Tainted: G O N 6.3.0-rc5lblk+ #5 Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS rel-1.14.0-0-g155821a1990b-prebuilt.qemu.org 04/01/2014 RIP: 0010:null_add_dev.part.0+0xd9/0x720 [null_blk] Code: 01 00 00 85 d2 0f 85 a1 03 00 00 48 83 bb 08 01 00 00 00 0f 85 f7 03 00 00 80 bb 62 01 00 00 00 48 8b 75 20 0f 85 6d 02 00 00 <48> 89 6e 60 48 8b 75 20 bf 06 00 00 00 e8 f5 37 2c c1 48 8b 75 20 RSP: 0018:ffffc900052cbde0 EFLAGS: 00010246 RAX: 0000000000000001 RBX: ffff88811084d800 RCX: 0000000000000001 RDX: 0000000000000000 RSI: 0000000000000000 RDI: ffff888100042e00 RBP: ffff8881053d8200 R08: ffffc900052cbd68 R09: ffff888105db2000 R10: 0000000000000001 R11: 0000000000000000 R12: 0000000000000002 R13: ffff888104765200 R14: ffff88810eec1748 R15: ffff88810eec1740 FS: 00007fd445fd1740(0000) GS:ffff8897dfc80000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 CR2: 0000000000000060 CR3: 0000000166a00000 CR4: 0000000000350ee0 DR0: ffffffff8437a488 DR1: ffffffff8437a489 DR2: ffffffff8437a48a DR3: ffffffff8437a48b DR6: 00000000ffff0ff0 DR7: 0000000000000400 Call Trace: <TASK> nullb_device_power_store+0xd1/0x120 [null_blk] configfs_write_iter+0xb4/0x120 vfs_write+0x2ba/0x3c0 ksys_write+0x5f/0xe0 do_syscall_64+0x3b/0x90 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x72/0xdc RIP: 0033:0x7fd4460c57a7 Code: 0d 00 f7 d8 64 89 02 48 c7 c0 ff ff ff ff eb b7 0f 1f 00 f3 0f 1e fa 64 8b 04 25 18 00 00 00 85 c0 75 10 b8 01 00 00 00 0f 05 <48> 3d 00 f0 ff ff 77 51 c3 48 83 ec 28 48 89 54 24 18 48 89 74 24 RSP: 002b:00007ffd3792a4a8 EFLAGS: 00000246 ORIG_RAX: 0000000000000001 RAX: ffffffffffffffda RBX: 0000000000000002 RCX: 00007fd4460c57a7 RDX: 0000000000000002 RSI: 000055b43c02e4c0 RDI: 0000000000000001 RBP: 000055b43c02e4c0 R08: 000000000000000a R09: 00007fd44615b4e0 R10: 00007fd44615b3e0 R11: 0000000000000246 R12: 0000000000000002 R13: 00007fd446198520 R14: 0000000000000002 R15: 00007fd446198700 </TASK>
- 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 (including static analysis) directly finds null-dereference bugs before deployment.
Documented development standards and tools can enforce null-safety rules and safe pointer usage.
Engineering principles can mandate defensive coding such as explicit null checks before dereference.
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.
Secure SDLC practices (static analysis, code review, safe coding standards) directly prevent NULL dereference bugs during development.
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.