# CVE-2024-53223: clk: ralink: mtmips: fix clocks probe order in oldest ralink SoCs

> A kernel driver bug causes a warning and potential instability during boot on specific Ralink SoCs, requiring a patch to fix clock probe order.

- **Severity:** Medium 5.5 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H`)
- **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:** Yes
- **Published:** 27 Dec 2024
- **Updated:** 11 May 2026
- **Also known as:** BELL-CVE-2024-53223, DEBIAN-CVE-2024-53223, GHSA-5xv2-6m9r-98p7, UBUNTU-CVE-2024-53223

## What is CVE-2024-53223?

CVE-2024-53223 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 27 Dec 2024. 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:

clk: ralink: mtmips: fix clocks probe order in oldest ralink SoCs

Base clocks are the first in being probed and are real dependencies of the
rest of fixed, factor and peripheral clocks. For old ralink SoCs RT2880,
RT305x and RT3883 'xtal' must be defined first since in any other case,
when fixed clocks are probed they are delayed until 'xtal' is probed so the
following warning appears:

 WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 0 at drivers/clk/ralink/clk-mtmips.c:499 rt3883_bus_recalc_rate+0x98/0x138
 Modules linked in:
 CPU: 0 PID: 0 Comm: swapper Not tainted 6.6.43 #0
 Stack : 805e58d0 00000000 00000004 8004f950 00000000 00000004 00000000 00000000
 80669c54 80830000 80700000 805ae570 80670068 00000001 80669bf8 00000000
 00000000 00000000 805ae570 80669b38 00000020 804db7dc 00000000 00000000
 203a6d6d 80669b78 80669e48 70617773 00000000 805ae570 00000000 00000009
 00000000 00000001 00000004 00000001 00000000 00000000 83fe43b0 00000000
 ...
 Call Trace:
 [<800065d0>] show_stack+0x64/0xf4
 [<804bca14>] dump_stack_lvl+0x38/0x60
 [<800218ac>] __warn+0x94/0xe4
 [<8002195c>] warn_slowpath_fmt+0x60/0x94
 [<80259ff8>] rt3883_bus_recalc_rate+0x98/0x138
 [<80254530>] __clk_register+0x568/0x688
 [<80254838>] of_clk_hw_register+0x18/0x2c
 [<8070b910>] rt2880_clk_of_clk_init_driver+0x18c/0x594
 [<8070b628>] of_clk_init+0x1c0/0x23c
 [<806fc448>] plat_time_init+0x58/0x18c
 [<806fdaf0>] time_init+0x10/0x6c
 [<806f9bc4>] start_kernel+0x458/0x67c

 ---[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]---

When this driver was mainlined we could not find any active users of old
ralink SoCs so we cannot perform any real tests for them. Now, one user
of a Belkin f9k1109 version 1 device which uses RT3883 SoC appeared and
reported some issues in openWRT:
- https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/issues/16054

Thus, define a 'rt2880_xtal_recalc_rate()' just returning the expected
frequency 40Mhz and use it along the old ralink SoCs to have a correct
boot trace with no warnings and a working clock plan from the beggining.

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2024-53223?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Linux kernel.

## How do I fix CVE-2024-53223?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2024-53223 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2024-53223 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

- [CVE-2026-53266](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-53266/): Linux Kernel Out-of-Bounds Write (high 8.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2013-6282](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2013-6282/): Linux Kernel Improper Input Validation (high 8.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2022-0185](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-0185/): Linux Kernel Heap-Based Buffer Overflow (high 8.4, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2013-2094](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2013-2094/): Linux Kernel Privilege Escalation (high 8.4, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2026-53362](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-53362/): Linux Kernel Unspecified (high 7.8, exploited in the wild)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2024-53223 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2024-53223 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 27 Dec 2024. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2024-53223 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Linux kernel. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2024-53223/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2024-53223/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2024-53223
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2024-53223
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2024-53223

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2024-53223/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.