CVE-2023-52477 usb: hub: Guard against accesses to uninitialized BOS descriptors

Medium 5.5 Published 29 Feb 2024 Updated 11 May 2026

A missing check for uninitialized BOS descriptors in the Linux kernel USB hub driver allows a local attacker to cause a system crash via a null pointer dereference.

Exploited in the wild: Not known
Login needed: Any signed-in user
Attackable: Local or same network only
Victim action needed: Not needed
Fix: Available

What is CVE-2023-52477?

CVE-2023-52477 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 29 Feb 2024. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

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

usb: hub: Guard against accesses to uninitialized BOS descriptors

Many functions in drivers/usb/core/hub.c and drivers/usb/core/hub.h access fields inside udev->bos without checking if it was allocated and initialized. If usb_get_bos_descriptor() fails for whatever reason, udev->bos will be NULL and those accesses will result in a crash:

BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000018 PGD 0 P4D 0 Oops: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP NOPTI CPU: 5 PID: 17818 Comm: kworker/5:1 Tainted: G W 5.15.108-18910-gab0e1cb584e1 #1 <HASH:1f9e 1> Hardware name: Google Kindred/Kindred, BIOS Google_Kindred.12672.413.0 02/03/2021 Workqueue: usb_hub_wq hub_event RIP: 0010:hub_port_reset+0x193/0x788 Code: 89 f7 e8 20 f7 15 00 48 8b 43 08 80 b8 96 03 00 00 03 75 36 0f b7 88 92 03 00 00 81 f9 10 03 00 00 72 27 48 8b 80 a8 03 00 00 <48> 83 78 18 00 74 19 48 89 df 48 8b 75 b0 ba 02 00 00 00 4c 89 e9 RSP: 0018:ffffab740c53fcf8 EFLAGS: 00010246 RAX: 0000000000000000 RBX: ffffa1bc5f678000 RCX: 0000000000000310 RDX: fffffffffffffdff RSI: 0000000000000286 RDI: ffffa1be9655b840 RBP: ffffab740c53fd70 R08: 00001b7d5edaa20c R09: ffffffffb005e060 R10: 0000000000000001 R11: 0000000000000000 R12: 0000000000000000 R13: ffffab740c53fd3e R14: 0000000000000032 R15: 0000000000000000 FS: 0000000000000000(0000) GS:ffffa1be96540000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 CR2: 0000000000000018 CR3: 000000022e80c005 CR4: 00000000003706e0 Call Trace: hub_event+0x73f/0x156e ? hub_activate+0x5b7/0x68f process_one_work+0x1a2/0x487 worker_thread+0x11a/0x288 kthread+0x13a/0x152 ? process_one_work+0x487/0x487 ? kthread_associate_blkcg+0x70/0x70 ret_from_fork+0x1f/0x30

Fall back to a default behavior if the BOS descriptor isn't accessible and skip all the functionalities that depend on it: LPM support checks, Super Speed capabilitiy checks, U1/U2 states setup.

Weakness: CWE-476

Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-52477?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2023-52477?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2023-52477 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-52477 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as BELL-CVE-2023-52477, DEBIAN-CVE-2023-52477, GHSA-qw42-c97g-78x6, UBUNTU-CVE-2023-52477.