AUGUST 4, 2026
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Case File

CVE-2023-53698

HIGH · CVSS 7.8 EPSS 0.20%

Source: NVD + CISA KEV + EPSS (historical backfill) · Published 2025-10-22 · Last synced 2026-08-04

CyberRota Analysis

This is a high severity vulnerability with a CVSS score of 7.8. It affects Linux.

CVE
CVE-2023-53698
Severity
HIGH
CVSS
7.8
EPSS
0.20%
Linux

Original NVD Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: xsk: fix refcount underflow in error path Fix a refcount underflow problem reported by syzbot that can happen when a system is running out of memory. If xp_alloc_tx_descs() fails, and it can only fail due to not having enough memory, then the error path is triggered. In this error path, the refcount of the pool is decremented as it has incremented before. However, the reference to the pool in the socket was not nulled. This means that when the socket is closed later, the socket teardown logic will think that there is a pool attached to the socket and try to decrease the refcount again, leading to a refcount underflow. I chose this fix as it involved adding just a single line. Another option would have been to move xp_get_pool() and the assignment of xs->pool to after the if-statement and using xs_umem->pool instead of xs->pool in the whole if-statement resulting in somewhat simpler code, but this would have led to much more churn in the code base perhaps making it harder to backport.