# CVE-2023-53087: drm/i915/active: Fix misuse of non-idle barriers as fence trackers > A race condition in the Linux kernel i915 driver causes list corruptions and system oopses when using graphics performance tools. - **Severity:** High 7.8 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/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:** 15 Oct 2026 - **Also known as:** BELL-CVE-2023-53087, DEBIAN-CVE-2023-53087, GHSA-5w85-r73p-4mf2, UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53087 ## What is CVE-2023-53087? CVE-2023-53087 is a high-severity 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: drm/i915/active: Fix misuse of non-idle barriers as fence trackers Users reported oopses on list corruptions when using i915 perf with a number of concurrently running graphics applications. Root cause analysis pointed at an issue in barrier processing code -- a race among perf open / close replacing active barriers with perf requests on kernel context and concurrent barrier preallocate / acquire operations performed during user context first pin / last unpin. When adding a request to a composite tracker, we try to reuse an existing fence tracker, already allocated and registered with that composite. The tracker we obtain may already track another fence, may be an idle barrier, or an active barrier. If the tracker we get occurs a non-idle barrier then we try to delete that barrier from a list of barrier tasks it belongs to. However, while doing that we don't respect return value from a function that performs the barrier deletion. Should the deletion ever fail, we would end up reusing the tracker still registered as a barrier task. Since the same structure field is reused with both fence callback lists and barrier tasks list, list corruptions would likely occur. Barriers are now deleted from a barrier tasks list by temporarily removing the list content, traversing that content with skip over the node to be deleted, then populating the list back with the modified content. Should that intentionally racy concurrent deletion attempts be not serialized, one or more of those may fail because of the list being temporary empty. Related code that ignores the results of barrier deletion was initially introduced in v5.4 by commit d8af05ff38ae ("drm/i915: Allow sharing the idle-barrier from other kernel requests"). However, all users of the barrier deletion routine were apparently serialized at that time, then the issue didn't exhibit itself. Results of git bisect with help of a newly developed igt@gem_barrier_race@remote-request IGT test indicate that list corruptions might start to appear after commit 311770173fac ("drm/i915/gt: Schedule request retirement when timeline idles"), introduced in v5.5. Respect results of barrier deletion attempts -- mark the barrier as idle only if successfully deleted from the list. Then, before proceeding with setting our fence as the one currently tracked, make sure that the tracker we've got is not a non-idle barrier. If that check fails then don't use that tracker but go back and try to acquire a new, usable one. v3: use unlikely() to document what outcome we expect (Andi), - fix bad grammar in commit description. v2: no code changes, - blame commit 311770173fac ("drm/i915/gt: Schedule request retirement when timeline idles"), v5.5, not commit d8af05ff38ae ("drm/i915: Allow sharing the idle-barrier from other kernel requests"), v5.4, - reword commit description. (cherry picked from commit 506006055769b10d1b2b4e22f636f3b45e0e9fc7) ## Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-53087? It affects 1 product. Products: Linux kernel. ## How do I fix CVE-2023-53087? Apply the vendor's patch. ## Is CVE-2023-53087 being exploited? There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-53087 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-2023-53087 and fix it if it is affected. What it is: CVE-2023-53087 is a high-severity 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-2023-53087 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-2023-53087/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2023-53087/index.md) ``` ## Sources - CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2023-53087 - NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-53087 - OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2023-53087 --- From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2023-53087/ Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.