CVE-2023-53472 pwm: lpc32xx: Remove handling of PWM channels

What is CVE-2023-53472?

CVE-2023-53472 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 1 Oct 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:

pwm: lpc32xx: Remove handling of PWM channels

Because LPC32xx PWM controllers have only a single output which is registered as the only PWM device/channel per controller, it is known in advance that pwm->hwpwm value is always 0. On basis of this fact simplify the code by removing operations with pwm->hwpwm, there is no controls which require channel number as input.

Even though I wasn't aware at the time when I forward ported that patch, this fixes a null pointer dereference as lpc32xx->chip.pwms is NULL before devm_pwmchip_add() is called.

Weakness: CWE-476

Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-53472?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2023-53472?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2023-53472 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-53472 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-2023-53472, DEBIAN-CVE-2023-53472, GHSA-3g53-3cmj-qjrh, UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53472.