CVE-2023-53823 block/rq_qos: protect rq_qos apis with a new lock
A race condition in the Linux kernel block layer can cause null pointer dereferences or memory leaks, potentially leading to system crashes.
- 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-2023-53823?
CVE-2023-53823 is a high-severity 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:
block/rq_qos: protect rq_qos apis with a new lock
commit 50e34d78815e ("block: disable the elevator int del_gendisk") move rq_qos_exit() from disk_release() to del_gendisk(), this will introduce some problems:
1) If rq_qos_add() is triggered by enabling iocost/iolatency through cgroupfs, then it can concurrent with del_gendisk(), it's not safe to write 'q->rq_qos' concurrently.
2) Activate cgroup policy that is relied on rq_qos will call rq_qos_add() and blkcg_activate_policy(), and if rq_qos_exit() is called in the middle, null-ptr-dereference will be triggered in blkcg_activate_policy().
3) blkg_conf_open_bdev() can call blkdev_get_no_open() first to find the disk, then if rq_qos_exit() from del_gendisk() is done before rq_qos_add(), then memory will be leaked.
This patch add a new disk level mutex 'rq_qos_mutex':
1) The lock will protect rq_qos_exit() directly.
2) For wbt that doesn't relied on blk-cgroup, rq_qos_add() can only be called from disk initialization for now because wbt can't be destructed until rq_qos_exit(), so it's safe not to protect wbt for now. Hoever, in case that rq_qos dynamically destruction is supported in the furture, this patch also protect rq_qos_add() from wbt_init() directly, this is enough because blk-sysfs already synchronize writers with disk removal.
3) For iocost and iolatency, in order to synchronize disk removal and cgroup configuration, the lock is held after blkdev_get_no_open() from blkg_conf_open_bdev(), and is released in blkg_conf_exit(). In order to fix the above memory leak, disk_live() is checked after holding the new lock.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-53823?
How do I fix CVE-2023-53823?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Is CVE-2023-53823 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-53823 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2023-53823, DEBIAN-CVE-2023-53823, GHSA-h5mg-vw9m-f6v8, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-12-CVE-2023-53823, UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53823.