CVE-2023-53250

firmware: dmi-sysfs: Fix null-ptr-deref in dmi_sysfs_register_handle

Medium · published September 15, 2025

CVSS v3.1
5.5
EPSS
0%
Percentile
3.7
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

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

firmware: dmi-sysfs: Fix null-ptr-deref in dmi_sysfs_register_handle

KASAN reported a null-ptr-deref error:

KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x0000000000000008-0x000000000000000f]

CPU: 0 PID: 1373 Comm: modprobe

Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996)

RIP: 0010:dmi_sysfs_entry_release

...

Call Trace:

<TASK>

kobject_put

dmi_sysfs_register_handle (drivers/firmware/dmi-sysfs.c:540) dmi_sysfs

dmi_decode_table (drivers/firmware/dmi_scan.c:133)

dmi_walk (drivers/firmware/dmi_scan.c:1115)

dmi_sysfs_init (drivers/firmware/dmi-sysfs.c:149) dmi_sysfs

do_one_initcall (init/main.c:1296)

...

Kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal exception

Kernel Offset: 0x4000000 from 0xffffffff81000000

---[ end Kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal exception ]---

It is because previous patch added kobject_put() to release the memory

which will call dmi_sysfs_entry_release() and list_del().

However, list_add_tail(entry->list) is called after the error block,

so the list_head is uninitialized and cannot be deleted.

Move error handling to after list_add_tail to fix this.

The record
Technical detail
CVSS v3.1
5.5 · MEDIUM
Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CVSS v4.0
Not supplied
EPSS
0.00148 · 3.7th percentile
Published
2025-09-15T14:46Z
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 15 SEP 14:46Z
    firmware: dmi-sysfs: Fix null-ptr-deref in dmi_sysfs_register_handle
    cvelistv5