Answer in brief
CVE-2023-53698 records a High severity (CVSS 7.8) vulnerability in xsk: fix refcount underflow in error path. 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.
| Package | Affected range | Fixed version |
|---|---|---|
| Linux/Linuxgeneric | >=f7019562f142bc041f9cde63af338d1886585923 <789fcd94c9cac133dd4d96e193188661aca9f6c3 || >=ba3beec2ec1d3b4fd8672ca6e781dac4b3267f6e <15b453cf7348973217558235b9ece2ee5fea6777 || >=ba3beec2ec1d3b4fd8672ca6e781dac4b3267f6e <3e7722c31d4167eb7f3ffd35aba52cab69b79072 || >=ba3beec2ec1d3b4fd8672ca6e781dac4b3267f6e <85c2c79a07302fe68a1ad5cc449458cc559e314d || 9f0c8a9d4ef1b9ebee0e4ac2495fe790727044aa || >=5.15.47 <5.15.127 || >=5.17.15 <5.18 | 789fcd94c9cac133dd4d96e193188661aca9f6c3, 15b453cf7348973217558235b9ece2ee5fea6777, 3e7722c31d4167eb7f3ffd35aba52cab69b79072, 85c2c79a07302fe68a1ad5cc449458cc559e314d, 5.15.127, 5.18 |
| Linux/Linuxgeneric | 5.18 | Not reported |
Published upstream
Oct 22, 2025
Evidence: source:cvelist:source_dates:source-dates:recordSource modified
Oct 28, 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: xsk: fix refcount underflow in error path Fix a refcount underflow problem reported by syzbot that can happen when a system is running out of memory. If xp_alloc_tx_descs() fails, and it can only fail due to not having enough memory, then the error path is triggered. In this error path, the refcount of the pool is decremented as it has incremented before. However, the reference to the pool in the socket was not nulled. This means that when the socket is closed later, the socket teardown logic will think that there is a pool attached to the socket and try to decrease the refcount again, leading to a refcount underflow. I chose this fix as it involved adding just a single line. Another option would have been to move xp_get_pool() and the assignment of xs->pool to after the if-statement and using xs_umem->pool instead of xs->pool in the whole if-statement resulting in somewhat simpler code, but this would have led to much more churn in the code base perhaps making it harder to backport.
Quoted source text, attributed separately from HOL analysis.