CVE-2023-53539 RDMA/rxe: Fix incomplete state save in rxe_requester
A flaw in the Linux kernel RDMA driver causes data corruption during packet retransmission due to incomplete state saving, potentially leading to data integrity issues.
- 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-2023-53539?
CVE-2023-53539 is a high-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 4 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:
RDMA/rxe: Fix incomplete state save in rxe_requester
If a send packet is dropped by the IP layer in rxe_requester() the call to rxe_xmit_packet() can fail with err == -EAGAIN. To recover, the state of the wqe is restored to the state before the packet was sent so it can be resent. However, the routines that save and restore the state miss a significnt part of the variable state in the wqe, the dma struct which is used to process through the sge table. And, the state is not saved before the packet is built which modifies the dma struct.
Under heavy stress testing with many QPs on a fast node sending large messages to a slow node dropped packets are observed and the resent packets are corrupted because the dma struct was not restored. This patch fixes this behavior and allows the test cases to succeed.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-53539?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Linux kernel.
How do I fix CVE-2023-53539?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Is CVE-2023-53539 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-53539 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
Sources
Also known as AZL-77396, BELL-CVE-2023-53539, DEBIAN-CVE-2023-53539, GHSA-v36f-cm3w-p7vq, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-11-CVE-2023-53539, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2204-CVE-2023-53539 and 1 more.