Cyber Resilience

CVE-2026-23353

Memory Safety in Linux Kernel 6.19.1 – 6.19.7

Published
25 March 2026
Modified
24 April 2026
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 0.0011 2th percentile
Risk Priority 35 floored blend · peak EPSS

Summary

CVE-2026-23353 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 Application or System Exploitation (T1499.004); ranked at the 2th 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 SI-2 (Flaw Remediation) and CM-7 (Least Functionality) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ice: fix crash in ethtool offline loopback test Since the conversion of ice to page pool, the ethtool loopback test crashes: BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 000000000000000c #PF: supervisor…

more

write access in kernel mode #PF: error_code(0x0002) - not-present page PGD 1100f1067 P4D 0 Oops: Oops: 0002 [#1] SMP NOPTI CPU: 23 UID: 0 PID: 5904 Comm: ethtool Kdump: loaded Not tainted 6.19.0-0.rc7.260128g1f97d9dcf5364.49.eln154.x86_64 #1 PREEMPT(lazy) Hardware name: [...] RIP: 0010:ice_alloc_rx_bufs+0x1cd/0x310 [ice] Code: 83 6c 24 30 01 66 41 89 47 08 0f 84 c0 00 00 00 41 0f b7 dc 48 8b 44 24 18 48 c1 e3 04 41 bb 00 10 00 00 48 8d 2c 18 8b 04 24 <89> 45 0c 41 8b 4d 00 49 d3 e3 44 3b 5c 24 24 0f 83 ac fe ff ff 44 RSP: 0018:ff7894738aa1f768 EFLAGS: 00010246 RAX: 0000000000000000 RBX: 0000000000000000 RCX: 0000000000000000 RDX: 0000000000000000 RSI: 0000000000000700 RDI: 0000000000000000 RBP: 0000000000000000 R08: ff16dcae79880200 R09: 0000000000000019 R10: 0000000000000001 R11: 0000000000001000 R12: 0000000000000000 R13: 0000000000000000 R14: 0000000000000000 R15: ff16dcae6c670000 FS: 00007fcf428850c0(0000) GS:ff16dcb149710000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 CR2: 000000000000000c CR3: 0000000121227005 CR4: 0000000000773ef0 PKRU: 55555554 Call Trace: <TASK> ice_vsi_cfg_rxq+0xca/0x460 [ice] ice_vsi_cfg_rxqs+0x54/0x70 [ice] ice_loopback_test+0xa9/0x520 [ice] ice_self_test+0x1b9/0x280 [ice] ethtool_self_test+0xe5/0x200 __dev_ethtool+0x1106/0x1a90 dev_ethtool+0xbe/0x1a0 dev_ioctl+0x258/0x4c0 sock_do_ioctl+0xe3/0x130 __x64_sys_ioctl+0xb9/0x100 do_syscall_64+0x7c/0x700 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x76/0x7e [...] It crashes because we have not initialized libeth for the rx ring. Fix it by treating ICE_VSI_LB VSIs slightly more like normal PF VSIs and letting them have a q_vector. It's just a dummy, because the loopback test does not use interrupts, but it contains a napi struct that can be passed to libeth_rx_fq_create() called from ice_vsi_cfg_rxq() -> ice_rxq_pp_create().

CWE(s)

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI

T1499.004 Application or System Exploitation Impact
Adversaries may exploit software vulnerabilities that can cause an application or system to crash and deny availability to users.
Why these techniques?

NULL dereference in ice driver enables local DoS via crafted ethtool loopback test (CWE-476).

Confidence: MEDIUM · MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise v19.0

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Affected Assets

linux
linux kernel
6.19, 7.0 · 6.19.1 — 6.19.7

Mitigating Controls

Control response

Prevent
Stop it (NIST 800-53)
  • SI-2 Flaw Remediation
  • CM-7 Least Functionality
Detect
Catch it (NIST detect / respond)
  • SI-4 System Monitoring
Harden
Shrink the surface (DISA STIG)

Validate
Prove the fix (OWASP ASVS)

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

prevent

Directly requires timely patching of the identified flaw in ice_alloc_rx_bufs after the page-pool conversion that triggers the NULL dereference.

prevent

Least-functionality setting can disable ethtool offline loopback tests that exercise the buggy RX buffer path.

detect

System monitoring can observe the resulting kernel oops and page-fault events during driver RX queue configuration.

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 mostly match
prevents

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.

detects

Security testing can detect NULL dereference defects before release.

prevents

Secure SDLC mandates defensive coding practices that can prevent NULL dereferences.

prevents

Application security requirements can specify input validation and pointer-safety rules.

prevents

Secure architecture principles encourage defensive design that avoids unsafe pointer use.

prevents

Secure coding standards directly require NULL-pointer checks and safe dereference patterns.

References