Answer in brief
CVE-2023-53178 records a High severity (CVSS 7.8) vulnerability in mm: fix zswap writeback race condition. The current sources do not mark it as known exploited. The current feed maps Linux/Linux (generic), Linux/Linux (generic). Check affected ranges and fixed versions before updating.
Analysis pending evidence review
HOL Guard separates source facts from reviewed analysis. See the methodology.
CVSS is 7.8. The current sources do not mark it as known exploited. Treat this as a source-backed prioritization signal, not a statement about your environment.
Analysis status
Analysis pending evidence review
Factual feed record only; HOL analysis is not approved for indexing. Read the methodology.
The current feed maps Linux/Linux (generic), Linux/Linux (generic). Check affected ranges and fixed versions before updating.
| Product | Affected versions | Fixed versions |
|---|---|---|
| cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* | Not reported | Not reported |
| cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.4:rc1:*:*:*:*:*:* | Not reported | Not reported |
| cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.4:rc2:*:*:*:*:*:* | Not reported | Not reported |
| Package | Affected range | Fixed version |
|---|---|---|
| Linux/Linuxgeneric | >=2b2811178e85553405b86e3fe78357b9b95889ce <2cab13f500a6333bd2b853783ac76be9e4956f8a || >=2b2811178e85553405b86e3fe78357b9b95889ce <ba700ea13bf0105a4773c654f7d3bef8adb64ab2 || >=2b2811178e85553405b86e3fe78357b9b95889ce <04fc7816089c5a32c29a04ec94b998e219dfb946 | 2cab13f500a6333bd2b853783ac76be9e4956f8a, ba700ea13bf0105a4773c654f7d3bef8adb64ab2, 04fc7816089c5a32c29a04ec94b998e219dfb946 |
| Linux/Linuxgeneric | 3.11 | Not reported |
Published upstream
Sep 15, 2025
Evidence: source:cvelist:source_dates:source-dates:recordSource modified
Aug 5, 2026
Evidence: source:cvelist:source_dates:source-dates:recordFirst seen by HOL
Aug 4, 2026
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm: fix zswap writeback race condition The zswap writeback mechanism can cause a race condition resulting in memory corruption, where a swapped out page gets swapped in with data that was written to a different page. The race unfolds like this: 1. a page with data A and swap offset X is stored in zswap 2. page A is removed off the LRU by zpool driver for writeback in zswap-shrink work, data for A is mapped by zpool driver 3. user space program faults and invalidates page entry A, offset X is considered free 4. kswapd stores page B at offset X in zswap (zswap could also be full, if so, page B would then be IOed to X, then skip step 5.) 5. entry A is replaced by B in tree->rbroot, this doesn't affect the local reference held by zswap-shrink work 6. zswap-shrink work writes back A at X, and frees zswap entry A 7. swapin of slot X brings A in memory instead of B The fix: Once the swap page cache has been allocated (case ZSWAP_SWAPCACHE_NEW), zswap-shrink work just checks that the local zswap_entry reference is still the same as the one in the tree. If it's not the same it means that it's either been invalidated or replaced, in both cases the writeback is aborted because the local entry contains stale data. Reproducer: I originally found this by running `stress` overnight to validate my work on the zswap writeback mechanism, it manifested after hours on my test machine. The key to make it happen is having zswap writebacks, so whatever setup pumps /sys/kernel/debug/zswap/written_back_pages should do the trick. In order to reproduce this faster on a vm, I setup a system with ~100M of available memory and a 500M swap file, then running `stress --vm 1 --vm-bytes 300000000 --vm-stride 4000` makes it happen in matter of tens of minutes. One can speed things up even more by swinging /sys/module/zswap/parameters/max_pool_percent up and down between, say, 20 and 1; this makes it reproduce in tens of seconds. It's crucial to set `--vm-stride` to something other than 4096 otherwise `stress` won't realize that memory has been corrupted because all pages would have the same data.
Quoted source text, attributed separately from HOL analysis.