CVE-2023-53201 RDMA/bnxt_re: wraparound mbox producer index

What is CVE-2023-53201?

CVE-2023-53201 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 15 Sep 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:

RDMA/bnxt_re: wraparound mbox producer index

Driver is not handling the wraparound of the mbox producer index correctly. Currently the wraparound happens once u32 max is reached.

Bit 31 of the producer index register is special and should be set only once for the first command. Because the producer index overflow setting bit31 after a long time, FW goes to initialization sequence and this causes FW hang.

Fix is to wraparound the mbox producer index once it reaches u16 max.

Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-53201?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2023-53201?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2023-53201 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-53201 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-2023-53201, DEBIAN-CVE-2023-53201, GHSA-p8h3-xc7h-q8r7, UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53201.