CVE-2023-53608

Updated on 04 Oct 2025

Severity

7.8 High severity

Details

CVSS score
7.8
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Overview

About vulnerability

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

nilfs2: fix potential UAF of struct nilfs_sc_info in nilfs_segctor_thread()

The finalization of nilfs_segctor_thread() can race with nilfs_segctor_kill_thread() which terminates that thread, potentially causing a use-after-free BUG as KASAN detected.

At the end of nilfs_segctor_thread(), it assigns NULL to “sc_task” member of “struct nilfs_sc_info” to indicate the thread has finished, and then notifies nilfs_segctor_kill_thread() of this using waitqueue “sc_wait_task” on the struct nilfs_sc_info.

However, here, immediately after the NULL assignment to “sc_task”, it is possible that nilfs_segctor_kill_thread() will detect it and return to continue the deallocation, freeing the nilfs_sc_info structure before the thread does the notification.

This fixes the issue by protecting the NULL assignment to “sc_task” and its notification, with spinlock “sc_state_lock” of the struct nilfs_sc_info. Since nilfs_segctor_kill_thread() does a final check to see if “sc_task” is NULL with “sc_state_lock” locked, this can eliminate the race.

Details

Affected packages:
linux @ 4.4.0 (+7 more)

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

nilfs2: fix potential UAF of struct nilfs_sc_info in nilfs_segctor_thread()

The finalization of nilfs_segctor_thread() can race with nilfs_segctor_kill_thread() which terminates that thread, potentially causing a use-after-free BUG as KASAN detected.

At the end of nilfs_segctor_thread(), it assigns NULL to “sc_task” member of “struct nilfs_sc_info” to indicate the thread has finished, and then notifies nilfs_segctor_kill_thread() of this using waitqueue “sc_wait_task” on the struct nilfs_sc_info.

However, here, immediately after the NULL assignment to “sc_task”, it is possible that nilfs_segctor_kill_thread() will detect it and return to continue the deallocation, freeing the nilfs_sc_info structure before the thread does the notification.

This fixes the issue by protecting the NULL assignment to “sc_task” and its notification, with spinlock “sc_state_lock” of the struct nilfs_sc_info. Since nilfs_segctor_kill_thread() does a final check to see if “sc_task” is NULL with “sc_state_lock” locked, this can eliminate the race.

Fixes