CVE-2023-53316 drm/msm/dp: Free resources after unregistering them

What is CVE-2023-53316?

CVE-2023-53316 is a high-severity use after free vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 16 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:

drm/msm/dp: Free resources after unregistering them

The DP component's unbind operation walks through the submodules to unregister and clean things up. But if the unbind happens because the DP controller itself is being removed, all the memory for those submodules has just been freed.

Change the order of these operations to avoid the many use-after-free that otherwise happens in this code path.

Patchwork: https://patchwork.freedesktop.org/patch/542166/

Weakness: CWE-416

Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-53316?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2023-53316?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Upgrade to the fixed version. These bugs are found with fuzzing and sanitisers and avoided by memory-safe languages. More about Use after free.

Is CVE-2023-53316 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-53316 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-2023-53316, DEBIAN-CVE-2023-53316, GHSA-hph3-9q45-4pf2, UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53316.