CVE-2023-53786 dm flakey: fix a crash with invalid table line
A local attacker with high privileges can cause a kernel crash via a NULL pointer dereference in the dm flakey target when processing invalid table lines.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- An administrator
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2023-53786?
CVE-2023-53786 is a vulnerability in Linux, published on 9 Dec 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:
dm flakey: fix a crash with invalid table line
This command will crash with NULL pointer dereference: dmsetup create flakey --table \ "0 `blockdev --getsize /dev/ram0` flakey /dev/ram0 0 0 1 2 corrupt_bio_byte 512"
Fix the crash by checking if arg_name is non-NULL before comparing it.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-53786?
How do I fix CVE-2023-53786?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Is CVE-2023-53786 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-53786 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2023-53786, DEBIAN-CVE-2023-53786, GHSA-7fp9-v4p9-p354, UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53786.