CVE-2023-54153 ext4: turn quotas off if mount failed after enabling quotas
A memory leak in the Linux kernel ext4 filesystem occurs when mount fails after enabling quotas, potentially leading to resource exhaustion and denial of service.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- A user has to click or open something
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2023-54153?
CVE-2023-54153 is a high-severity memory corruption vulnerability in Linux, published on 24 Dec 2025. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.
Official description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
ext4: turn quotas off if mount failed after enabling quotas
Yi found during a review of the patch "ext4: don't BUG on inconsistent journal feature" that when ext4_mark_recovery_complete() returns an error value, the error handling path does not turn off the enabled quotas, which triggers the following kmemleak:
================================================================ unreferenced object 0xffff8cf68678e7c0 (size 64): comm "mount", pid 746, jiffies 4294871231 (age 11.540s) hex dump (first 32 bytes): 00 90 ef 82 f6 8c ff ff 00 00 00 00 41 01 00 00 ............A... c7 00 00 00 bd 00 00 00 0a 00 00 00 48 00 00 00 ............H... backtrace: [<00000000c561ef24>] __kmem_cache_alloc_node+0x4d4/0x880 [<00000000d4e621d7>] kmalloc_trace+0x39/0x140 [<00000000837eee74>] v2_read_file_info+0x18a/0x3a0 [<0000000088f6c877>] dquot_load_quota_sb+0x2ed/0x770 [<00000000340a4782>] dquot_load_quota_inode+0xc6/0x1c0 [<0000000089a18bd5>] ext4_enable_quotas+0x17e/0x3a0 [ext4] [<000000003a0268fa>] __ext4_fill_super+0x3448/0x3910 [ext4] [<00000000b0f2a8a8>] ext4_fill_super+0x13d/0x340 [ext4] [<000000004a9489c4>] get_tree_bdev+0x1dc/0x370 [<000000006e723bf1>] ext4_get_tree+0x1d/0x30 [ext4] [<00000000c7cb663d>] vfs_get_tree+0x31/0x160 [<00000000320e1bed>] do_new_mount+0x1d5/0x480 [<00000000c074654c>] path_mount+0x22e/0xbe0 [<0000000003e97a8e>] do_mount+0x95/0xc0 [<000000002f3d3736>] __x64_sys_mount+0xc4/0x160 [<0000000027d2140c>] do_syscall_64+0x3f/0x90 ================================================================
To solve this problem, we add a "failed_mount10" tag, and call ext4_quota_off_umount() in this tag to release the enabled qoutas.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-54153?
How do I fix CVE-2023-54153?
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-2023-54153 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-54153 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2023-54153, DEBIAN-CVE-2023-54153, GHSA-969x-jvv9-7j58, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-11-CVE-2023-54153, UBUNTU-CVE-2023-54153.