Linux KernelOperating system · Linux
CVE-2023-53612
Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.
NVD · uneditedIn the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: hwmon: (coretemp) Simplify platform device handling Coretemp's platform driver is unconventional. All the real work is done globally by the initcall and CPU hotplug notifiers, while the "driver" effectively just wraps an allocation and the registration of the hwmon interface in a long-winded round-trip through the driver core. The whole logic of dynamically creating and destroying platform devices to bring the interfaces up and down is error prone, since it assumes platform_device_add() will synchronously bind the driver and set drvdata before it returns, thus results in a NULL dereference if drivers_autoprobe is turned off for the platform bus. Furthermore, the unusual approach of doing that from within a CPU hotplug notifier, already commented in the code that it deadlocks suspend, also causes lockdep issues for other drivers or subsystems which may want to legitimately register a CPU hotplug notifier from a platform bus notifier. All of these issues can be solved by ripping this unusual behaviour out completely, simply tying the platform devices to the lifetime of the module itself, and directly managing the hwmon interfaces from the hotplug notifiers. There is a slight user-visible change in that /sys/bus/platform/drivers/coretemp will no longer appear, and /sys/devices/platform/coretemp.n will remain present if package n is hotplugged off, but hwmon users should really only be looking for the presence of the hwmon interfaces, whose behaviour remains unchanged.
Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.
dbcve analysisThe code follows a pointer that is null, crashing the process. An attacker who can reliably trigger it turns the crash into a denial of service. The fix is checking for null before use and handling the failure path gracefully.
General guidance for the null pointer dereference class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →
Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.
NVD · CPE data
Linux KernelOperating system
>= 4.10, < 5.4.235>= 5.5, < 5.10.173>= 5.11, < 5.15.99>= 5.16, < 6.1.16>= 6.2, < 6.2.3CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.
From the vector- Attack vector
- Local
- Complexity
- Low
- Privileges
- Low
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- None
- Integrity
- None
- Availability
- High
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.
dbcve · scoped5.4.2355.10.1735.15.99
5.4.235 or later (if on 5.4.x); 5.10.173 or later (if on 5.10.x); 5.15.99 or later (if on 5.15.x); 6.1.16 or later (if on 6.1.x)
- Identify the currently running Linux kernel version using 'uname -r'
- Determine which stable kernel branch your current version belongs to (5.4.x, 5.10.x, 5.15.x, or 6.1.x)
- Upgrade to a fixed kernel version: for 5.4.x line upgrade to >=5.4.235, for 5.10.x upgrade to >=5.10.173, for 5.15.x upgrade to >=5.15.99, or for 6.1.x upgrade to >=6.1.16
- Apply the kernel upgrade using your distribution's package manager (e.g., apt-get update && apt-get upgrade, yum update, dnf update, or similar)
- Reboot the system to load the fixed kernel
Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.
Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2023-53612 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.
References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.
Primary sourcesPractitioner notes
ContributedPeer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2023-53612 in production — separate from our analysis above.
The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.
- The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
- A config change or rule that shut the vector down
- A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon
No notes yet
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- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
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