Use After Free in Linux

CVE-2023-53072

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mptcp: use the workqueue to destroy unaccepted sockets Christoph reported a UaF at token lookup time after having refactored the passive socket initialization part: BUG: KASAN: use-after-free in __token_bucket_busy+0x253/0x260 Read of size 4 at addr ffff88810698d5b0 by task syz-executor653/3198 CPU: 1 PID: 3198 Comm: syz-executor653 Not tainted 6.2.0-rc59af4eaa31c1f6c00c8f1e448ed99a45c66340dd5 #6 Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS rel-1.13.0-0-gf21b5a4aeb02-prebuilt.qemu.org 04/01/2014 Call Trace: <TASK> dump_stack_lvl+0x6e/0x91 print_report+0x16a/0x46f kasan_report+0xad/0x130 __token_bucket_busy+0x253/0x260 mptcp_token_new_connect+0x13d/0x490 mptcp_connect+0x4ed/0x860 __inet_stream_connect+0x80e/0xd90 tcp_sendmsg_fastopen+0x3ce/0x710 mptcp_sendmsg+0xff1/0x1a20 inet_sendmsg+0x11d/0x140 __sys_sendto+0x405/0x490 __x64_sys_sendto+0xdc/0x1b0 do_syscall_64+0x3b/0x90 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x72/0xdc We need to properly clean-up all the paired MPTCP-level resources and be sure to release the msk last, even when the unaccepted subflow is destroyed by the TCP internals via inet_child_forget(). We can re-use the existing MPTCP_WORK_CLOSE_SUBFLOW infra, explicitly checking that for the critical scenario: the closed subflow is the MPC one, the msk is not accepted and eventually going through full cleanup. With such change, __mptcp_destroy_sock() is always called on msk sockets, even on accepted ones. We don't need anymore to transiently drop one sk reference at msk clone time. Please note this commit depends on the parent one: mptcp: refactor passive socket initialization

Vulnerability class: Use-After-Free

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 7.8 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.002 (9.4th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 9th percentile — 9.4% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2023-53072: held from 0.002 to 0.002.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.002 · newest: 0.002 · change: +0.000

Affected products

  • Linux — versions 58b09919626bf9067345289212ec030c61eb1034, 5.7, 0
  • Linux Kernel — versions 6.3

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2023-53072?
CVE-2023-53072 is a high-severity vulnerability in Linux, classified under Use After Free. CVSS score: 7.8/10. Published 2025-05-02.
How severe is CVE-2023-53072?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.8 out of 10.