CVE-2023-54217 Revert "drm/msm: Add missing check and destroy for alloc_ordered_workqueue"
A null pointer dereference in the Linux kernel MSM DRM driver can cause a system crash, requiring a local attacker to trigger specific initialization errors.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2023-54217?
CVE-2023-54217 is a vulnerability in Linux, published on 30 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:
Revert "drm/msm: Add missing check and destroy for alloc_ordered_workqueue"
This reverts commit 643b7d0869cc7f1f7a5ac7ca6bd25d88f54e31d0.
A recent patch that tried to fix up the msm_drm_init() paths with respect to the workqueue but only ended up making things worse:
First, the newly added calls to msm_drm_uninit() on early errors would trigger NULL-pointer dereferences, for example, as the kms pointer would not have been initialised. (Note that these paths were also modified by a second broken error handling patch which in effect cancelled out this part when merged.)
Second, the newly added allocation sanity check would still leak the previously allocated drm device.
Instead of trying to salvage what was badly broken (and clearly not tested), let's revert the bad commit so that clean and backportable fixes can be added in its place.
Patchwork: https://patchwork.freedesktop.org/patch/525107/
Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-54217?
How do I fix CVE-2023-54217?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Is CVE-2023-54217 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-54217 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2023-54217, GHSA-gj73-539r-gfvc, UBUNTU-CVE-2023-54217.