CVE-2023-53231 erofs: Fix detection of atomic context
A bug in the Linux kernel's EROFS filesystem causes a kernel panic when decompression occurs in an atomic context, leading to denial of service.
- 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-2023-53231?
CVE-2023-53231 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:
erofs: Fix detection of atomic context
Current check for atomic context is not sufficient as z_erofs_decompressqueue_endio can be called under rcu lock from blk_mq_flush_plug_list(). See the stacktrace [1]
In such case we should hand off the decompression work for async processing rather than trying to do sync decompression in current context. Patch fixes the detection by checking for rcu_read_lock_any_held() and while at it use more appropriate !in_task() check than in_atomic().
Background: Historically erofs would always schedule a kworker for decompression which would incur the scheduling cost regardless of the context. But z_erofs_decompressqueue_endio() may not always be in atomic context and we could actually benefit from doing the decompression in z_erofs_decompressqueue_endio() if we are in thread context, for example when running with dm-verity. This optimization was later added in patch [2] which has shown improvement in performance benchmarks.
============================================== [1] Problem stacktrace [name:core&]BUG: sleeping function called from invalid context at kernel/locking/mutex.c:291 [name:core&]in_atomic(): 0, irqs_disabled(): 0, non_block: 0, pid: 1615, name: CpuMonitorServi [name:core&]preempt_count: 0, expected: 0 [name:core&]RCU nest depth: 1, expected: 0 CPU: 7 PID: 1615 Comm: CpuMonitorServi Tainted: G S W OE 6.1.25-android14-5-maybe-dirty-mainline #1 Hardware name: MT6897 (DT) Call trace: dump_backtrace+0x108/0x15c show_stack+0x20/0x30 dump_stack_lvl+0x6c/0x8c dump_stack+0x20/0x48 __might_resched+0x1fc/0x308 __might_sleep+0x50/0x88 mutex_lock+0x2c/0x110 z_erofs_decompress_queue+0x11c/0xc10 z_erofs_decompress_kickoff+0x110/0x1a4 z_erofs_decompressqueue_endio+0x154/0x180 bio_endio+0x1b0/0x1d8 __dm_io_complete+0x22c/0x280 clone_endio+0xe4/0x280 bio_endio+0x1b0/0x1d8 blk_update_request+0x138/0x3a4 blk_mq_plug_issue_direct+0xd4/0x19c blk_mq_flush_plug_list+0x2b0/0x354 __blk_flush_plug+0x110/0x160 blk_finish_plug+0x30/0x4c read_pages+0x2fc/0x370 page_cache_ra_unbounded+0xa4/0x23c page_cache_ra_order+0x290/0x320 do_sync_mmap_readahead+0x108/0x2c0 filemap_fault+0x19c/0x52c __do_fault+0xc4/0x114 handle_mm_fault+0x5b4/0x1168 do_page_fault+0x338/0x4b4 do_translation_fault+0x40/0x60 do_mem_abort+0x60/0xc8 el0_da+0x4c/0xe0 el0t_64_sync_handler+0xd4/0xfc el0t_64_sync+0x1a0/0x1a4
[2] Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/[email protected]/
Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-53231?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Linux kernel.
How do I fix CVE-2023-53231?
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-2023-53231 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-53231 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2023-53231, DEBIAN-CVE-2023-53231, GHSA-72rq-7p7f-9f9j, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-11-CVE-2023-53231, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-12-CVE-2023-53231, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2204-CVE-2023-53231 and 1 more.