CVE-2023-53392 HID: intel-ish-hid: Fix kernel panic during warm reset

What is CVE-2023-53392?

CVE-2023-53392 is a high-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 18 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:

HID: intel-ish-hid: Fix kernel panic during warm reset

During warm reset device->fw_client is set to NULL. If a bus driver is registered after this NULL setting and before new firmware clients are enumerated by ISHTP, kernel panic will result in the function ishtp_cl_bus_match(). This is because of reference to device->fw_client->props.protocol_name.

ISH firmware after getting successfully loaded, sends a warm reset notification to remove all clients from the bus and sets device->fw_client to NULL. Until kernel v5.15, all enabled ISHTP kernel module drivers were loaded right after any of the first ISHTP device was registered, regardless of whether it was a matched or an unmatched device. This resulted in all drivers getting registered much before the warm reset notification from ISH.

Starting kernel v5.16, this issue got exposed after the change was introduced to load only bus drivers for the respective matching devices. In this scenario, cros_ec_ishtp device and cros_ec_ishtp driver are registered after the warm reset device fw_client NULL setting. cros_ec_ishtp driver_register() triggers the callback to ishtp_cl_bus_match() to match ISHTP driver to the device and causes kernel panic in guid_equal() when dereferencing fw_client NULL pointer to get protocol_name.

Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-53392?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2023-53392?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2023-53392 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-53392 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-2023-53392, DEBIAN-CVE-2023-53392, GHSA-h5fg-gggq-x5vh, UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53392.