Security Resilience

CVE-2023-6040

Memory Safety in Linux Kernel 4.16 – 4.19.305

Public PoCMemory Safety
Published
12 January 2024
Modified
20 March 2025
Patch / advisory
CVSS Score v3.1 7.8
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
EPSS Score 0.0031 22th percentile
Risk Priority 56 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-2023-6040 is a high-severity Out-of-bounds Read (CWE-125) vulnerability in Linux Linux Kernel. Its CVSS base score is 7.8 (High).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Data Obfuscation (T1001); ranked at the 22th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog; a public proof-of-concept is referenced.

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

An out-of-bounds access vulnerability involving netfilter was reported and fixed as: f1082dd31fe4 (netfilter: nf_tables: Reject tables of unsupported family); While creating a new netfilter table, lack of a safeguard against invalid nf_tables family (pf) values within `nf_tables_newtable` function enables an…

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attacker to achieve out-of-bounds access.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques

T1001 Data Obfuscation Command And Control
Adversaries may obfuscate command and control traffic to make it more difficult to detect.
T1001.002 Steganography Command And Control
Adversaries may use steganographic techniques to hide command and control traffic to make detection efforts more difficult.
T1003.002 Security Account Manager Credential Access
Adversaries may attempt to extract credential material from the Security Account Manager (SAM) database either through in-memory techniques or through the Windows Registry where the SAM database is stored.
T1003.003 NTDS Credential Access
Adversaries may attempt to access or create a copy of the Active Directory domain database in order to steal credential information, as well as obtain other information about domain members such as devices, users, and access rights.
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.
T1003.006 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…
Derived from this CVE’s CWE(s) via the direct CWE→ATT&CK cross-walk.

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CVE-2025-38482Same product: Debian Debian Linux
CVE-2024-36960Same product: Debian Debian Linux
CVE-2025-39839Same product: Debian Debian Linux

Affected Assets

linux
linux kernel
4.16 — 4.19.305 · 4.20 — 5.4.267 · 5.5 — 5.10.208
debian
debian linux
10.0

Mitigating Controls

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

Developer testing and evaluation directly finds out-of-bounds read flaws through static analysis, fuzzing, and dynamic bounds checks.

Secure engineering principles require bounds checking and memory-safe constructs that stop out-of-bounds reads from being introduced.

Process isolation confines the effects of an out-of-bounds read to the compromised process.

Input validation rejects malformed indices or lengths that would otherwise cause reads outside buffer bounds.

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.

ID.RA-01 partial match
blocks

Vulnerability scanning and recording can discover instances of out-of-bounds reads after code is deployed.

PR.PS-02 partial match
blocks

Routine patching replaces vulnerable code containing out-of-bounds read flaws.

PR.PS-06 partial match
blocks

Secure-development practices such as bounds checking and memory-safe languages directly prevent out-of-bounds reads.

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