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CVE-2023-53698 High

xsk: fix refcount underflow in error path

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.

Exploit probability 0.2%
Published October 22, 2025
Required by Not available
Last source change August 12, 2026

02 / AFFECTED SOFTWARE

Affected packages

Linux Kernel
Unknown Unknown

813 explicit affected versions

03 / CONNECTIONS

Connected vulnerabilities

04 / EVIDENCE

Source records

Open Source Vulnerabilities CVE-2023-53698

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.

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05 / REFERENCES

Further evidence