CVE-2023-53561 net: wwan: iosm: fix NULL pointer dereference when removing device
A NULL pointer dereference in the Linux kernel WWAN driver can cause a system crash during device removal or suspend/resume cycles.
- 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-2023-53561?
CVE-2023-53561 is a medium-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:
net: wwan: iosm: fix NULL pointer dereference when removing device
In suspend and resume cycle, the removal and rescan of device ends up in NULL pointer dereference.
During driver initialization, if the ipc_imem_wwan_channel_init() fails to get the valid device capabilities it returns an error and further no resource (wwan struct) will be allocated. Now in this situation if driver removal procedure is initiated it would result in NULL pointer exception since unallocated wwan struct is dereferenced inside ipc_wwan_deinit().
ipc_imem_run_state_worker() to handle the called functions return value and to release the resource in failure case. It also reports the link down event in failure cases. The user space application can handle this event to do a device reset for restoring the device communication.
Weakness: CWE-476
Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-53561?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Linux kernel.
How do I fix CVE-2023-53561?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Is CVE-2023-53561 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-53561 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
Sources
Also known as AZL-77435, BELL-CVE-2023-53561, DEBIAN-CVE-2023-53561, GHSA-44pm-q7mw-v83g, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2204-CVE-2023-53561, UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53561.