CVE-2024-53190
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: wifi: rtlwifi: Drastically reduce the attempts to read efuse in case of failures Syzkaller reported a hung task with uevent_show() on stack trace. That specific issue was addressed by another commit [0], but even with that fix applied (for example, running v6.12-rc5) we face another type of hung task that comes from the same reproducer [1]. By investigating that, we could narrow it to the following path: (a) Syzkaller emulates a Realtek USB WiFi adapter using raw-gadget and dummy_hcd infrastructure. (b) During the probe of rtl8192cu, the driver ends-up performing an efuse read procedure (which is related to EEPROM load IIUC), and here lies the issue: the function read_efuse() calls read_efuse_byte() many times, as loop iterations depending on the efuse size (in our example, 512 in total). This procedure for reading efuse bytes relies in a loop that performs an I/O read up to *10k* times in case of failures. We measured the time of the loop inside read_efuse_byte() alone, and in this reproducer (which involves the dummy_hcd emulation layer), it takes 15 seconds each. As a consequence, we have the driver stuck in its probe routine for big time, exposing a stack trace like below if we attempt to reboot the system, for example: task:kworker/0:3 state:D stack:0 pid:662 tgid:662 ppid:2 flags:0x00004000 Workqueue: usb_hub_wq hub_event Call Trace: __schedule+0xe22/0xeb6 schedule_timeout+0xe7/0x132 __wait_for_common+0xb5/0x12e usb_start_wait_urb+0xc5/0x1ef ? usb_alloc_urb+0x95/0xa4 usb_control_msg+0xff/0x184 _usbctrl_vendorreq_sync+0xa0/0x161 _usb_read_sync+0xb3/0xc5 read_efuse_byte+0x13c/0x146 read_efuse+0x351/0x5f0 efuse_read_all_map+0x42/0x52 rtl_efuse_shadow_map_update+0x60/0xef rtl_get_hwinfo+0x5d/0x1c2 rtl92cu_read_eeprom_info+0x10a/0x8d5 ? rtl92c_read_chip_version+0x14f/0x17e rtl_usb_probe+0x323/0x851 usb_probe_interface+0x278/0x34b really_probe+0x202/0x4a4 __driver_probe_device+0x166/0x1b2 driver_probe_device+0x2f/0xd8 [...] We propose hereby to drastically reduce the attempts of doing the I/O reads in case of failures, restricted to USB devices (given that they're inherently slower than PCIe ones). By retrying up to 10 times (instead of 10000), we got reponsiveness in the reproducer, while seems reasonable to believe that there's no sane USB device implementation in the field requiring this amount of retries at every I/O read in order to properly work. Based on that assumption, it'd be good to have it backported to stable but maybe not since driver implementation (the 10k number comes from day 0), perhaps up to 6.x series makes sense. [0] Commit 15fffc6a5624 ("driver core: Fix uevent_show() vs driver detach race") [1] A note about that: this syzkaller report presents multiple reproducers that differs by the type of emulated USB device. For this specific case, check the entry from 2024/08/08 06:23 in the list of crashes; the C repro is available at https://syzkaller.appspot.com/text?tag=ReproC&x=1521fc83980000.
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 analysisA detailed technical summary for this CVE is being prepared.
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>= 2.6.38, < 6.1.120>= 6.2, < 6.6.64>= 6.7, < 6.11.11>= 6.12, < 6.12.2CVSS 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 · scoped6.1.1206.6.646.11.11
6.1.120, 6.6.64, 6.11.11, or 6.12.2 (or later stable releases)
- Upgrade the Linux kernel to a fixed release: 6.1.120 or later for the 6.1.y branch, 6.6.64 or later for the 6.6.y branch, 6.11.11 or later for the 6.7-6.11.y branches, or 6.12.2 or later for the 6.12.y branch
- After upgrading, reboot the system to load the new 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-2024-53190 — 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-2024-53190 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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