CVE-2023-54325 crypto: qat - fix out-of-bounds read
A local attacker can trigger an out-of-bounds read in the Intel QAT crypto driver, potentially causing a kernel crash or leaking sensitive memory.
- 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-2023-54325?
CVE-2023-54325 is a high-severity memory corruption 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:
crypto: qat - fix out-of-bounds read
When preparing an AER-CTR request, the driver copies the key provided by the user into a data structure that is accessible by the firmware. If the target device is QAT GEN4, the key size is rounded up by 16 since a rounded up size is expected by the device. If the key size is rounded up before the copy, the size used for copying the key might be bigger than the size of the region containing the key, causing an out-of-bounds read.
Fix by doing the copy first and then update the keylen.
This is to fix the following warning reported by KASAN:
[ 138.150574] BUG: KASAN: global-out-of-bounds in qat_alg_skcipher_init_com.isra.0+0x197/0x250 [intel_qat] [ 138.150641] Read of size 32 at addr ffffffff88c402c0 by task cryptomgr_test/2340
[ 138.150651] CPU: 15 PID: 2340 Comm: cryptomgr_test Not tainted 6.2.0-rc1+ #45 [ 138.150659] Hardware name: Intel Corporation ArcherCity/ArcherCity, BIOS EGSDCRB1.86B.0087.D13.2208261706 08/26/2022 [ 138.150663] Call Trace: [ 138.150668] <TASK> [ 138.150922] kasan_check_range+0x13a/0x1c0 [ 138.150931] memcpy+0x1f/0x60 [ 138.150940] qat_alg_skcipher_init_com.isra.0+0x197/0x250 [intel_qat] [ 138.151006] qat_alg_skcipher_init_sessions+0xc1/0x240 [intel_qat] [ 138.151073] crypto_skcipher_setkey+0x82/0x160 [ 138.151085] ? prepare_keybuf+0xa2/0xd0 [ 138.151095] test_skcipher_vec_cfg+0x2b8/0x800
Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-54325?
How do I fix CVE-2023-54325?
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-2023-54325 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-54325 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2023-54325, DEBIAN-CVE-2023-54325, GHSA-r67g-vmvr-rvjq, UBUNTU-CVE-2023-54325.