CVE-2023-53475 usb: xhci: tegra: fix sleep in atomic call
A bug in the Linux kernel Tegra USB driver causes a sleep in atomic context, leading to a system crash or 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-2023-53475?
CVE-2023-53475 is a medium-severity denial of service 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:
usb: xhci: tegra: fix sleep in atomic call
When we set the dual-role port to Host mode, we observed the following splat: [ 167.057718] BUG: sleeping function called from invalid context at include/linux/sched/mm.h:229 [ 167.057872] Workqueue: events tegra_xusb_usb_phy_work [ 167.057954] Call trace: [ 167.057962] dump_backtrace+0x0/0x210 [ 167.057996] show_stack+0x30/0x50 [ 167.058020] dump_stack_lvl+0x64/0x84 [ 167.058065] dump_stack+0x14/0x34 [ 167.058100] __might_resched+0x144/0x180 [ 167.058140] __might_sleep+0x64/0xd0 [ 167.058171] slab_pre_alloc_hook.constprop.0+0xa8/0x110 [ 167.058202] __kmalloc_track_caller+0x74/0x2b0 [ 167.058233] kvasprintf+0xa4/0x190 [ 167.058261] kasprintf+0x58/0x90 [ 167.058285] tegra_xusb_find_port_node.isra.0+0x58/0xd0 [ 167.058334] tegra_xusb_find_port+0x38/0xa0 [ 167.058380] tegra_xusb_padctl_get_usb3_companion+0x38/0xd0 [ 167.058430] tegra_xhci_id_notify+0x8c/0x1e0 [ 167.058473] notifier_call_chain+0x88/0x100 [ 167.058506] atomic_notifier_call_chain+0x44/0x70 [ 167.058537] tegra_xusb_usb_phy_work+0x60/0xd0 [ 167.058581] process_one_work+0x1dc/0x4c0 [ 167.058618] worker_thread+0x54/0x410 [ 167.058650] kthread+0x188/0x1b0 [ 167.058672] ret_from_fork+0x10/0x20
The function tegra_xusb_padctl_get_usb3_companion eventually calls tegra_xusb_find_port and this in turn calls kasprintf which might sleep and so cannot be called from an atomic context.
Fix this by moving the call to tegra_xusb_padctl_get_usb3_companion to the tegra_xhci_id_work function where it is really needed.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-53475?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Linux kernel.
How do I fix CVE-2023-53475?
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-2023-53475 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-53475 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2023-53475, DEBIAN-CVE-2023-53475, GHSA-hj96-v5c9-949r, UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53475.