CVE-2023-53176

MEDIUM

Linux kernel - Memory Corruption in serial8250_pm

Title source: llm
STIX 2.1

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: serial: 8250: Reinit port->pm on port specific driver unbind When we unbind a serial port hardware specific 8250 driver, the generic serial8250 driver takes over the port. After that we see an oops about 10 seconds later. This can produce the following at least on some TI SoCs: Unhandled fault: imprecise external abort (0x1406) Internal error: : 1406 [#1] SMP ARM Turns out that we may still have the serial port hardware specific driver port->pm in use, and serial8250_pm() tries to call it after the port specific driver is gone: serial8250_pm [8250_base] from uart_change_pm+0x54/0x8c [serial_base] uart_change_pm [serial_base] from uart_hangup+0x154/0x198 [serial_base] uart_hangup [serial_base] from __tty_hangup.part.0+0x328/0x37c __tty_hangup.part.0 from disassociate_ctty+0x154/0x20c disassociate_ctty from do_exit+0x744/0xaac do_exit from do_group_exit+0x40/0x8c do_group_exit from __wake_up_parent+0x0/0x1c Let's fix the issue by calling serial8250_set_defaults() in serial8250_unregister_port(). This will set the port back to using the serial8250 default functions, and sets the port->pm to point to serial8250_pm.

Scores

CVSS v3 5.5
EPSS 0.0015
EPSS Percentile 4.3%
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 (26)
linux/Kernel 2.6.37 - 4.14.316linux
linux/Kernel 4.15.0 - 4.19.284linux
linux/Kernel 4.20.0 - 5.4.244linux
linux/Kernel 5.11.0 - 5.15.113linux
linux/Kernel 5.16.0 - 6.1.30linux
linux/Kernel 5.5.0 - 5.10.181linux
linux/Kernel 6.2.0 - 6.3.4linux
Linux/Linux < 2.6.37
Linux/Linux 2.6.37
Linux/Linux 4.14.316 - 4.14.*
... and 16 more
Published Sep 15, 2025
Tracked Since Feb 18, 2026