CVE-2023-52855 usb: dwc2: fix possible NULL pointer dereference caused by driver concurrency

What is CVE-2023-52855?

CVE-2023-52855 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 21 May 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: dwc2: fix possible NULL pointer dereference caused by driver concurrency

In _dwc2_hcd_urb_enqueue(), "urb->hcpriv = NULL" is executed without holding the lock "hsotg->lock". In _dwc2_hcd_urb_dequeue():

spin_lock_irqsave(&hsotg->lock, flags); ... if (!urb->hcpriv) { dev_dbg(hsotg->dev, "## urb->hcpriv is NULL ##\n"); goto out; } rc = dwc2_hcd_urb_dequeue(hsotg, urb->hcpriv); // Use urb->hcpriv ... out: spin_unlock_irqrestore(&hsotg->lock, flags);

When _dwc2_hcd_urb_enqueue() and _dwc2_hcd_urb_dequeue() are concurrently executed, the NULL check of "urb->hcpriv" can be executed before "urb->hcpriv = NULL". After urb->hcpriv is NULL, it can be used in the function call to dwc2_hcd_urb_dequeue(), which can cause a NULL pointer dereference.

This possible bug is found by an experimental static analysis tool developed by myself. This tool analyzes the locking APIs to extract function pairs that can be concurrently executed, and then analyzes the instructions in the paired functions to identify possible concurrency bugs including data races and atomicity violations. The above possible bug is reported, when my tool analyzes the source code of Linux 6.5.

To fix this possible bug, "urb->hcpriv = NULL" should be executed with holding the lock "hsotg->lock". After using this patch, my tool never reports the possible bug, with the kernelconfiguration allyesconfig for x86_64. Because I have no associated hardware, I cannot test the patch in runtime testing, and just verify it according to the code logic.

Weakness: CWE-476

Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-52855?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2023-52855?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2023-52855 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-52855 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

• CVE-2026-53266 Linux Kernel Out-of-Bounds Write Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2013-6282 Linux Kernel Improper Input Validation Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2022-0185 Linux Kernel Heap-Based Buffer Overflow Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2013-2094 Linux Kernel Privilege Escalation Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2026-53362 Linux Kernel Unspecified Exploited High 7.8

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as BELL-CVE-2023-52855, DEBIAN-CVE-2023-52855, GHSA-5c84-c56q-jq6c, UBUNTU-CVE-2023-52855.