CVE-2023-53596 drivers: base: Free devm resources when unregistering a device
A memory leak in the Linux kernel device driver core can lead to resource exhaustion and denial of service when unregistering bus-less or driver-less devices.
- 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-2023-53596?
CVE-2023-53596 is a high-severity memory corruption 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:
drivers: base: Free devm resources when unregistering a device
In the current code, devres_release_all() only gets called if the device has a bus and has been probed.
This leads to issues when using bus-less or driver-less devices where the device might never get freed if a managed resource holds a reference to the device. This is happening in the DRM framework for example.
We should thus call devres_release_all() in the device_del() function to make sure that the device-managed actions are properly executed when the device is unregistered, even if it has neither a bus nor a driver.
This is effectively the same change than commit 2f8d16a996da ("devres: release resources on device_del()") that got reverted by commit a525a3ddeaca ("driver core: free devres in device_release") over memory leaks concerns.
This patch effectively combines the two commits mentioned above to release the resources both on device_del() and device_release() and get the best of both worlds.
Weakness: CWE-415
Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-53596?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Linux kernel.
How do I fix CVE-2023-53596?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Upgrade to the fixed version. Memory-safe languages, compiler hardening and fuzzing prevent most new cases. More about Memory corruption.
Is CVE-2023-53596 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-53596 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2023-53596, DEBIAN-CVE-2023-53596, GHSA-66x2-rpwx-fjfr, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-11-CVE-2023-53596, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2204-CVE-2023-53596, UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53596.