CVE-2023-54291 vduse: fix NULL pointer dereference
A local attacker can cause a kernel crash by deleting a vduse device, leading to denial of service.
- 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-2023-54291?
CVE-2023-54291 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:
vduse: fix NULL pointer dereference
vduse_vdpa_set_vq_affinity callback can be called with NULL value as cpu_mask when deleting the vduse device.
This patch resets virtqueue's IRQ affinity mask value to set all CPUs instead of dereferencing NULL cpu_mask.
[ 4760.952149] BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000000 [ 4760.959110] #PF: supervisor read access in kernel mode [ 4760.964247] #PF: error_code(0x0000) - not-present page [ 4760.969385] PGD 0 P4D 0 [ 4760.971927] Oops: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP PTI [ 4760.976112] CPU: 13 PID: 2346 Comm: vdpa Not tainted 6.4.0-rc6+ #4 [ 4760.982291] Hardware name: Dell Inc. PowerEdge R640/0W23H8, BIOS 2.8.1 06/26/2020 [ 4760.989769] RIP: 0010:memcpy_orig+0xc5/0x130 [ 4760.994049] Code: 16 f8 4c 89 07 4c 89 4f 08 4c 89 54 17 f0 4c 89 5c 17 f8 c3 cc cc cc cc 66 66 2e 0f 1f 84 00 00 00 00 00 66 90 83 fa 08 72 1b <4c> 8b 06 4c 8b 4c 16 f8 4c 89 07 4c 89 4c 17 f8 c3 cc cc cc cc 66 [ 4761.012793] RSP: 0018:ffffb1d565abb830 EFLAGS: 00010246 [ 4761.018020] RAX: ffff9f4bf6b27898 RBX: ffff9f4be23969c0 RCX: ffff9f4bcadf6400 [ 4761.025152] RDX: 0000000000000008 RSI: 0000000000000000 RDI: ffff9f4bf6b27898 [ 4761.032286] RBP: 0000000000000000 R08: 0000000000000008 R09: 0000000000000000 [ 4761.039416] R10: 0000000000000000 R11: 0000000000000600 R12: 0000000000000000 [ 4761.046549] R13: 0000000000000000 R14: 0000000000000080 R15: ffffb1d565abbb10 [ 4761.053680] FS: 00007f64c2ec2740(0000) GS:ffff9f635f980000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 [ 4761.061765] CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 [ 4761.067513] CR2: 0000000000000000 CR3: 0000001875270006 CR4: 00000000007706e0 [ 4761.074645] DR0: 0000000000000000 DR1: 0000000000000000 DR2: 0000000000000000 [ 4761.081775] DR3: 0000000000000000 DR6: 00000000fffe0ff0 DR7: 0000000000000400 [ 4761.088909] PKRU: 55555554 [ 4761.091620] Call Trace: [ 4761.094074] <TASK> [ 4761.096180] ? __die+0x1f/0x70 [ 4761.099238] ? page_fault_oops+0x171/0x4f0 [ 4761.103340] ? exc_page_fault+0x7b/0x180 [ 4761.107265] ? asm_exc_page_fault+0x22/0x30 [ 4761.111460] ? memcpy_orig+0xc5/0x130 [ 4761.115126] vduse_vdpa_set_vq_affinity+0x3e/0x50 [vduse] [ 4761.120533] virtnet_clean_affinity.part.0+0x3d/0x90 [virtio_net] [ 4761.126635] remove_vq_common+0x1a4/0x250 [virtio_net] [ 4761.131781] virtnet_remove+0x5d/0x70 [virtio_net] [ 4761.136580] virtio_dev_remove+0x3a/0x90 [ 4761.140509] device_release_driver_internal+0x19b/0x200 [ 4761.145742] bus_remove_device+0xc2/0x130 [ 4761.149755] device_del+0x158/0x3e0 [ 4761.153245] ? kernfs_find_ns+0x35/0xc0 [ 4761.157086] device_unregister+0x13/0x60 [ 4761.161010] unregister_virtio_device+0x11/0x20 [ 4761.165543] device_release_driver_internal+0x19b/0x200 [ 4761.170770] bus_remove_device+0xc2/0x130 [ 4761.174782] device_del+0x158/0x3e0 [ 4761.178276] ? __pfx_vdpa_name_match+0x10/0x10 [vdpa] [ 4761.183336] device_unregister+0x13/0x60 [ 4761.187260] vdpa_nl_cmd_dev_del_set_doit+0x63/0xe0 [vdpa]
Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-54291?
How do I fix CVE-2023-54291?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Is CVE-2023-54291 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-54291 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2023-54291, GHSA-8w34-jjgr-cq87, UBUNTU-CVE-2023-54291.