CVE-2023-53513 nbd: fix incomplete validation of ioctl arg
A local attacker can trigger a signed integer overflow in the Linux kernel NBD driver via a crafted ioctl argument, causing a system crash.
- 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-2023-53513?
CVE-2023-53513 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:
nbd: fix incomplete validation of ioctl arg
We tested and found an alarm caused by nbd_ioctl arg without verification. The UBSAN warning calltrace like below:
UBSAN: Undefined behaviour in fs/buffer.c:1709:35 signed integer overflow: -9223372036854775808 - 1 cannot be represented in type 'long long int' CPU: 3 PID: 2523 Comm: syz-executor.0 Not tainted 4.19.90 #1 Hardware name: linux,dummy-virt (DT) Call trace: dump_backtrace+0x0/0x3f0 arch/arm64/kernel/time.c:78 show_stack+0x28/0x38 arch/arm64/kernel/traps.c:158 __dump_stack lib/dump_stack.c:77 [inline] dump_stack+0x170/0x1dc lib/dump_stack.c:118 ubsan_epilogue+0x18/0xb4 lib/ubsan.c:161 handle_overflow+0x188/0x1dc lib/ubsan.c:192 __ubsan_handle_sub_overflow+0x34/0x44 lib/ubsan.c:206 __block_write_full_page+0x94c/0xa20 fs/buffer.c:1709 block_write_full_page+0x1f0/0x280 fs/buffer.c:2934 blkdev_writepage+0x34/0x40 fs/block_dev.c:607 __writepage+0x68/0xe8 mm/page-writeback.c:2305 write_cache_pages+0x44c/0xc70 mm/page-writeback.c:2240 generic_writepages+0xdc/0x148 mm/page-writeback.c:2329 blkdev_writepages+0x2c/0x38 fs/block_dev.c:2114 do_writepages+0xd4/0x250 mm/page-writeback.c:2344
The reason for triggering this warning is __block_write_full_page() -> i_size_read(inode) - 1 overflow. inode->i_size is assigned in __nbd_ioctl() -> nbd_set_size() -> bytesize. We think it is necessary to limit the size of arg to prevent errors.
Moreover, __nbd_ioctl() -> nbd_add_socket(), arg will be cast to int. Assuming the value of arg is 0x80000000000000001) (on a 64-bit machine), it will become 1 after the coercion, which will return unexpected results.
Fix it by adding checks to prevent passing in too large numbers.
Weakness: CWE-674
Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-53513?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Linux kernel.
How do I fix CVE-2023-53513?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Is CVE-2023-53513 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-53513 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2023-53513, DEBIAN-CVE-2023-53513, GHSA-jvcg-848p-wjgf, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-11-CVE-2023-53513, UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53513.