CVE-2023-53503

medium
Published 2024-11-12 ยท Modified 2024-11-12
CVSS v3
โ€”
CVSS v4 NEW
โ€”
not yet in upstream
VIR risk
5.5

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ext4: allow ext4_get_group_info() to fail Previously, ext4_get_group_info() would treat an invalid group number as BUG(), since in theory it should never happen. However, if a malicious attaker (or fuzzer) modifies the superblock via the block device while it is the file system is mounted, it is possible for s_first_data_block to get set to a very large number. In that case, when calculating the block group of some block number (such as the starting block of a preallocation region), could result in an underflow and very large block group number. Then the BUG_ON check in ext4_get_group_info() would fire, resutling in a denial of service attack that can be triggered by root or someone with write access to the block device. For a quality of implementation perspective, it's best that even if the system administrator does something that they shouldn't, that it will not trigger a BUG. So instead of BUG'ing, ext4_get_group_info() will call ext4_error and return NULL. We also add fallback code in all of the callers of ext4_get_group_info() that it might NULL. Also, since ext4_get_group_info() was already borderline to be an inline function, un-inline it. The results in a next reduction of the compiled text size of ext4 by roughly 2k.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood
20%
Patch ETA
โ€”

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No mitigations published for this CVE yet.

The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or โ€” if you've already worked around this in production โ€” publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

โœš Propose a mitigation on Community โ†’ Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here with source_tier=community-verified.

OS impact

suse SUSE Affected 1 release
VersionStatusFixed in
โ€” Affected โ€”
debian Debian Fixed 5 releases
VersionStatusFixed in
trixie Fixed 6.3.7-1
sid Fixed 6.3.7-1
forky Fixed 6.3.7-1
bullseye Fixed 5.10.191-1
bookworm Fixed 6.1.37-1
redhat Red Hat Fixed 1 release
VersionStatusFixed in
9 Fixed โ€”

References

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.