CVE-2023-53188

net: openvswitch: fix race on port output

published September 15, 2025

CVSS
—
EPSS
0%
Percentile
1.4
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

net: openvswitch: fix race on port output

assume the following setup on a single machine:

1. An openvswitch instance with one bridge and default flows

2. two network namespaces "server" and "client"

3. two ovs interfaces "server" and "client" on the bridge

4. for each ovs interface a veth pair with a matching name and 32 rx and

tx queues

5. move the ends of the veth pairs to the respective network namespaces

6. assign ip addresses to each of the veth ends in the namespaces (needs

to be the same subnet)

7. start some http server on the server network namespace

8. test if a client in the client namespace can reach the http server

when following the actions below the host has a chance of getting a cpu

stuck in a infinite loop:

1. send a large amount of parallel requests to the http server (around

3000 curls should work)

2. in parallel delete the network namespace (do not delete interfaces or

stop the server, just kill the namespace)

there is a low chance that this will cause the below kernel cpu stuck

message. If this does not happen just retry.

Below there is also the output of bpftrace for the functions mentioned

in the output.

The series of events happening here is:

1. the network namespace is deleted calling

`unregister_netdevice_many_notify` somewhere in the process

2. this sets first `NETREG_UNREGISTERING` on both ends of the veth and

then runs `synchronize_net`

3. it then calls `call_netdevice_notifiers` with `NETDEV_UNREGISTER`

4. this is then handled by `dp_device_event` which calls

`ovs_netdev_detach_dev` (if a vport is found, which is the case for

the veth interface attached to ovs)

5. this removes the rx_handlers of the device but does not prevent

packages to be sent to the device

6. `dp_device_event` then queues the vport deletion to work in

background as a ovs_lock is needed that we do not hold in the

unregistration path

7. `unregister_netdevice_many_notify` continues to call

`netdev_unregister_kobject` which sets `real_num_tx_queues` to 0

8. port deletion continues (but details are not relevant for this issue)

9. at some future point the background task deletes the vport

If after 7. but before 9. a packet is send to the ovs vport (which is

not deleted at this point in time) which forwards it to the

`dev_queue_xmit` flow even though the device is unregistering.

In `skb_tx_hash` (which is called in the `dev_queue_xmit`) path there is

a while loop (if the packet has a rx_queue recorded) that is infinite if

`dev->real_num_tx_queues` is zero.

To prevent this from happening we update `do_output` to handle devices

without carrier the same as if the device is not found (which would

be the code path after 9. is done).

Additionally we now produce a warning in `skb_tx_hash` if we will hit

the infinite loop.

bpftrace (first word is function name):

__dev_queue_xmit server: real_num_tx_queues: 1, cpu: 2, pid: 28024, tid: 28024, skb_addr: 0xffff9edb6f207000, reg_state: 1

netdev_core_pick_tx server: addr: 0xffff9f0a46d4a000 real_num_tx_queues: 1, cpu: 2, pid: 28024, tid: 28024, skb_addr: 0xffff9edb6f207000, reg_state: 1

dp_device_event server: real_num_tx_queues: 1 cpu 9, pid: 21024, tid: 21024, event 2, reg_state: 1

synchronize_rcu_expedited: cpu 9, pid: 21024, tid: 21024

synchronize_rcu_expedited: cpu 9, pid: 21024, tid: 21024

synchronize_rcu_expedited: cpu 9, pid: 21024, tid: 21024

synchronize_rcu_expedited: cpu 9, pid: 21024, tid: 21024

dp_device_event server: real_num_tx_queues: 1 cpu 9, pid: 21024, tid: 21024, event 6, reg_state: 2

ovs_netdev_detach_dev server: real_num_tx_queues: 1 cpu 9, pid: 21024, tid: 21024, reg_state: 2

netdev_rx_handler_unregister server: real_num_tx_queues: 1, cpu: 9, pid: 21024, tid: 21024, reg_state: 2

synchronize_rcu_expedited: cpu 9, pid: 21024, tid: 21024

netdev_rx_handler_unregister ret server: real_num_tx_queues: 1, cpu: 9, pid: 21024, tid: 21024, reg_state: 2

dp_

---truncated---

The record
Technical detail
CVSS
Not scored
CVSS v4.0
Not supplied
EPSS
0.00114 · 1.4th percentile
Published
2025-09-15T14:04Z
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 15 SEP 14:04Z
    net: openvswitch: fix race on port output
    cvelistv5