CVE-2023-53261 coresight: Fix memory leak in acpi_buffer->pointer
A memory leak in the Linux kernel's coresight driver allows attackers to exhaust system memory, causing 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-2023-53261?
CVE-2023-53261 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:
coresight: Fix memory leak in acpi_buffer->pointer
There are memory leaks reported by kmemleak: ... unreferenced object 0xffff00213c141000 (size 1024): comm "systemd-udevd", pid 2123, jiffies 4294909467 (age 6062.160s) hex dump (first 32 bytes): 04 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 18 10 14 3c 21 00 ff ff ...........<!... 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 03 00 00 00 10 00 00 00 ................ backtrace: [<000000004b7c9001>] __kmem_cache_alloc_node+0x2f8/0x348 [<00000000b0fc7ceb>] __kmalloc+0x58/0x108 [<0000000064ff4695>] acpi_os_allocate+0x2c/0x68 [<000000007d57d116>] acpi_ut_initialize_buffer+0x54/0xe0 [<0000000024583908>] acpi_evaluate_object+0x388/0x438 [<0000000017b2e72b>] acpi_evaluate_object_typed+0xe8/0x240 [<000000005df0eac2>] coresight_get_platform_data+0x1b4/0x988 [coresight] ...
The ACPI buffer memory (buf.pointer) should be freed. But the buffer is also used after returning from acpi_get_dsd_graph(). Move the temporary variables buf to acpi_coresight_parse_graph(), and free it before the function return to prevent memory leak.
Weakness: CWE-401
Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-53261?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Linux kernel.
How do I fix CVE-2023-53261?
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-2023-53261 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-53261 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2023-53261, DEBIAN-CVE-2023-53261, GHSA-5qhg-ffc9-x697, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-11-CVE-2023-53261, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-12-CVE-2023-53261, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2204-CVE-2023-53261 and 1 more.