# CVE-2023-53070: ACPI: PPTT: Fix to avoid sleep in the atomic context when PPTT is absent

> A bug in the Linux kernel ACPI PPTT handling causes a kernel panic when PPTT is absent during CPU hotplug, leading to denial of service.

- **Severity:** Medium 5.5 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H`)
- **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:** Yes
- **Published:** 2 May 2025
- **Updated:** 23 May 2026
- **Also known as:** BELL-CVE-2023-53070, DEBIAN-CVE-2023-53070, GHSA-f3gj-m2gw-jf95, UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53070

## What is CVE-2023-53070?

CVE-2023-53070 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 2 May 2025. 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:

ACPI: PPTT: Fix to avoid sleep in the atomic context when PPTT is absent

Commit 0c80f9e165f8 ("ACPI: PPTT: Leave the table mapped for the runtime usage")
enabled to map PPTT once on the first invocation of acpi_get_pptt() and
never unmapped the same allowing it to be used at runtime with out the
hassle of mapping and unmapping the table. This was needed to fetch LLC
information from the PPTT in the cpuhotplug path which is executed in
the atomic context as the acpi_get_table() might sleep waiting for a
mutex.

However it missed to handle the case when there is no PPTT on the system
which results in acpi_get_pptt() being called from all the secondary
CPUs attempting to fetch the LLC information in the atomic context
without knowing the absence of PPTT resulting in the splat like below:

 | BUG: sleeping function called from invalid context at kernel/locking/semaphore.c:164
 | in_atomic(): 1, irqs_disabled(): 1, non_block: 0, pid: 0, name: swapper/1
 | preempt_count: 1, expected: 0
 | RCU nest depth: 0, expected: 0
 | no locks held by swapper/1/0.
 | irq event stamp: 0
 | hardirqs last  enabled at (0): 0x0
 | hardirqs last disabled at (0): copy_process+0x61c/0x1b40
 | softirqs last  enabled at (0): copy_process+0x61c/0x1b40
 | softirqs last disabled at (0): 0x0
 | CPU: 1 PID: 0 Comm: swapper/1 Not tainted 6.3.0-rc1 #1
 | Call trace:
 |  dump_backtrace+0xac/0x138
 |  show_stack+0x30/0x48
 |  dump_stack_lvl+0x60/0xb0
 |  dump_stack+0x18/0x28
 |  __might_resched+0x160/0x270
 |  __might_sleep+0x58/0xb0
 |  down_timeout+0x34/0x98
 |  acpi_os_wait_semaphore+0x7c/0xc0
 |  acpi_ut_acquire_mutex+0x58/0x108
 |  acpi_get_table+0x40/0xe8
 |  acpi_get_pptt+0x48/0xa0
 |  acpi_get_cache_info+0x38/0x140
 |  init_cache_level+0xf4/0x118
 |  detect_cache_attributes+0x2e4/0x640
 |  update_siblings_masks+0x3c/0x330
 |  store_cpu_topology+0x88/0xf0
 |  secondary_start_kernel+0xd0/0x168
 |  __secondary_switched+0xb8/0xc0

Update acpi_get_pptt() to consider the fact that PPTT is once checked and
is not available on the system and return NULL avoiding any attempts to
fetch PPTT and thereby avoiding any possible sleep waiting for a mutex
in the atomic context.

Weakness: CWE-252 (Unchecked Return Value)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-53070?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Linux kernel.

## How do I fix CVE-2023-53070?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2023-53070 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-53070 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

- [CVE-2026-53266](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-53266/): Linux Kernel Out-of-Bounds Write (high 8.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2013-6282](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2013-6282/): Linux Kernel Improper Input Validation (high 8.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2022-0185](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-0185/): Linux Kernel Heap-Based Buffer Overflow (high 8.4, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2013-2094](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2013-2094/): Linux Kernel Privilege Escalation (high 8.4, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2026-53362](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-53362/): Linux Kernel Unspecified (high 7.8, exploited in the wild)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2023-53070 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2023-53070 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 2 May 2025. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-53070 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Linux kernel. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2023-53070/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2023-53070/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2023-53070
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-53070
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2023-53070

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2023-53070/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.