CVE-2023-53614 mm/ksm: fix race with VMA iteration and mm_struct teardown

What is CVE-2023-53614?

CVE-2023-53614 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:

mm/ksm: fix race with VMA iteration and mm_struct teardown

exit_mmap() will tear down the VMAs and maple tree with the mmap_lock held in write mode. Ensure that the maple tree is still valid by checking ksm_test_exit() after taking the mmap_lock in read mode, but before the for_each_vma() iterator dereferences a destroyed maple tree.

Since the maple tree is destroyed, the flags telling lockdep to check an external lock has been cleared. Skip the for_each_vma() iterator to avoid dereferencing a maple tree without the external lock flag, which would create a lockdep warning.

Weakness: CWE-362

Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-53614?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2023-53614?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2023-53614 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-53614 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

• CVE-2026-53266 Linux Kernel Out-of-Bounds Write Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2013-6282 Linux Kernel Improper Input Validation Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2022-0185 Linux Kernel Heap-Based Buffer Overflow Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2013-2094 Linux Kernel Privilege Escalation Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2026-53362 Linux Kernel Unspecified Exploited High 7.8

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as BELL-CVE-2023-53614, DEBIAN-CVE-2023-53614, GHSA-m8wv-9hr6-j68w, UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53614.