CVE-2023-53422 wifi: iwlwifi: fw: fix memory leak in debugfs

What is CVE-2023-53422?

CVE-2023-53422 is a medium-severity denial of service 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:

wifi: iwlwifi: fw: fix memory leak in debugfs

Fix a memory leak that occurs when reading the fw_info file all the way, since we return NULL indicating no more data, but don't free the status tracking object.

Weakness: CWE-401

Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-53422?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2023-53422?

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-2023-53422 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-53422 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-2023-53422, DEBIAN-CVE-2023-53422, GHSA-2jxw-cwmm-p22x, UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53422.