CVE-2023-53461

MEDIUM

Linux Kernel - Denial of Service via io_uring Exit Work Hung Task

Title source: llm
STIX 2.1

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: io_uring: wait interruptibly for request completions on exit WHen the ring exits, cleanup is done and the final cancelation and waiting on completions is done by io_ring_exit_work. That function is invoked by kworker, which doesn't take any signals. Because of that, it doesn't really matter if we wait for completions in TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE or TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE state. However, it does matter to the hung task detection checker! Normally we expect cancelations and completions to happen rather quickly. Some test cases, however, will exit the ring and park the owning task stopped (eg via SIGSTOP). If the owning task needs to run task_work to complete requests, then io_ring_exit_work won't make any progress until the task is runnable again. Hence io_ring_exit_work can trigger the hung task detection, which is particularly problematic if panic-on-hung-task is enabled. As the ring exit doesn't take signals to begin with, have it wait interruptibly rather than uninterruptibly. io_uring has a separate stuck-exit warning that triggers independently anyway, so we're not really missing anything by making this switch.

Scores

CVSS v3 5.5
EPSS 0.0014
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 (17)
linux/Kernel 5.1.0 - 5.10.188linux
linux/Kernel 5.11.0 - 5.15.121linux
linux/Kernel 5.16.0 - 6.1.39linux
linux/Kernel 6.2.0 - 6.4.4linux
Linux/Linux < 5.1
Linux/Linux 2b188cc1bb857a9d4701ae59aa7768b5124e262e - 28e649dc9947e6525c95e32aa9a8e147925e3f56
Linux/Linux 2b188cc1bb857a9d4701ae59aa7768b5124e262e - 4826c59453b3b4677d6bf72814e7ababdea86949
Linux/Linux 2b188cc1bb857a9d4701ae59aa7768b5124e262e - 58e80cb68b057e974768792c34708c6957810486
Linux/Linux 2b188cc1bb857a9d4701ae59aa7768b5124e262e - 8e29835366138389bfad3b31ea06960d0a77bf77
Linux/Linux 2b188cc1bb857a9d4701ae59aa7768b5124e262e - b50d6e06cca7b67a3d73ca660dda27662b76e6ea
... and 7 more
Published Oct 01, 2025
Tracked Since Feb 18, 2026