CVE-2023-53480

Updated on 01 Oct 2025

Severity

5.5 Medium severity

Details

CVSS score
5.5
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Overview

About vulnerability

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

kobject: Add sanity check for kset->kobj.ktype in kset_register()

When I register a kset in the following way: static struct kset my_kset; kobject_set_name(&my_kset.kobj, “my_kset”); ret = kset_register(&my_kset);

A null pointer dereference exception is occurred: [ 4453.568337] Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at
virtual address 0000000000000028 … … [ 4453.810361] Call trace: [ 4453.813062] kobject_get_ownership+0xc/0x34 [ 4453.817493] kobject_add_internal+0x98/0x274 [ 4453.822005] kset_register+0x5c/0xb4 [ 4453.825820] my_kobj_init+0x44/0x1000 [my_kset] … …

Because I didn’t initialize my_kset.kobj.ktype.

According to the description in Documentation/core-api/kobject.rst:

  • A ktype is the type of object that embeds a kobject. Every structure that embeds a kobject needs a corresponding ktype.

So add sanity check to make sure kset->kobj.ktype is not NULL.

Details

Affected packages:
linux @ 5.4.0 (+3 more)

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

kobject: Add sanity check for kset->kobj.ktype in kset_register()

When I register a kset in the following way: static struct kset my_kset; kobject_set_name(&my_kset.kobj, “my_kset”); ret = kset_register(&my_kset);

A null pointer dereference exception is occurred: [ 4453.568337] Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at
virtual address 0000000000000028 … … [ 4453.810361] Call trace: [ 4453.813062] kobject_get_ownership+0xc/0x34 [ 4453.817493] kobject_add_internal+0x98/0x274 [ 4453.822005] kset_register+0x5c/0xb4 [ 4453.825820] my_kobj_init+0x44/0x1000 [my_kset] … …

Because I didn’t initialize my_kset.kobj.ktype.

According to the description in Documentation/core-api/kobject.rst:

  • A ktype is the type of object that embeds a kobject. Every structure that embeds a kobject needs a corresponding ktype.

So add sanity check to make sure kset->kobj.ktype is not NULL.

Fixes