CVE-2023-53658 spi: bcm-qspi: return error if neither hif_mspi nor mspi is available
A null pointer dereference in the Broadcom QSPI driver causes a kernel crash during device removal if specific resources are missing.
- 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-2023-53658?
CVE-2023-53658 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 7 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:
spi: bcm-qspi: return error if neither hif_mspi nor mspi is available
If neither a "hif_mspi" nor "mspi" resource is present, the driver will just early exit in probe but still return success. Apart from not doing anything meaningful, this would then also lead to a null pointer access on removal, as platform_get_drvdata() would return NULL, which it would then try to dereference when trying to unregister the spi master.
Fix this by unconditionally calling devm_ioremap_resource(), as it can handle a NULL res and will then return a viable ERR_PTR() if we get one.
The "return 0;" was previously a "goto qspi_resource_err;" where then ret was returned, but since ret was still initialized to 0 at this place this was a valid conversion in 63c5395bb7a9 ("spi: bcm-qspi: Fix use-after-free on unbind"). The issue was not introduced by this commit, only made more obvious.
Weakness: CWE-476
Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-53658?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Linux kernel.
How do I fix CVE-2023-53658?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Is CVE-2023-53658 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-53658 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2023-53658, DEBIAN-CVE-2023-53658, GHSA-f5pr-pcc8-pgcp, UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53658.