CVE-2023-53172

MEDIUM

Linux Kernel - Denial of Service via FS_IOC_ENABLE_VERITY on Mode 3 File Descriptors

Title source: llm
STIX 2.1

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: fsverity: reject FS_IOC_ENABLE_VERITY on mode 3 fds Commit 56124d6c87fd ("fsverity: support enabling with tree block size < PAGE_SIZE") changed FS_IOC_ENABLE_VERITY to use __kernel_read() to read the file's data, instead of direct pagecache accesses. An unintended consequence of this is that the 'WARN_ON_ONCE(!(file->f_mode & FMODE_READ))' in __kernel_read() became reachable by fuzz tests. This happens if FS_IOC_ENABLE_VERITY is called on a fd opened with access mode 3, which means "ioctl access only". Arguably, FS_IOC_ENABLE_VERITY should work on ioctl-only fds. But ioctl-only fds are a weird Linux extension that is rarely used and that few people even know about. (The documentation for FS_IOC_ENABLE_VERITY even specifically says it requires O_RDONLY.) It's probably not worthwhile to make the ioctl internally open a new fd just to handle this case. Thus, just reject the ioctl on such fds for now.

Scores

CVSS v3 5.5
EPSS 0.0013
EPSS Percentile 2.8%
Attack Vector LOCAL
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Details

Status published
Products (8)
linux/Kernel 6.3.0 - 6.3.1linux
Linux/Linux < 6.3
Linux/Linux 56124d6c87fd749477425110d2564166621a89c4 - 04839139213cf60d4c5fc792214a08830e294ff8
Linux/Linux 56124d6c87fd749477425110d2564166621a89c4 - 85c039cff3c359967cafe90443c02321e950b216
Linux/Linux 6.3
Linux/Linux 6.3.1 - 6.3.*
Linux/Linux 6.4
linux/linux_kernel 6.3
Published Sep 15, 2025
Tracked Since Feb 18, 2026