Vulnerability in Linux
CVE-2023-53487
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: powerpc/rtas_flash: allow user copy to flash block cache objects With hardened usercopy enabled (CONFIG_HARDENED_USERCOPY=y), using the /proc/powerpc/rtas/firmware_update interface to prepare a system firmware update yields a BUG(): kernel BUG at mm/usercopy.c:102! Oops: Exception in kernel mode, sig: 5 [#1] LE PAGE_SIZE=64K MMU=Hash SMP NR_CPUS=2048 NUMA pSeries Modules linked in: CPU: 0 PID: 2232 Comm: dd Not tainted 6.5.0-rc3+ #2 Hardware name: IBM,8408-E8E POWER8E (raw) 0x4b0201 0xf000004 of:IBM,FW860.50 (SV860_146) hv:phyp pSeries NIP: c0000000005991d0 LR: c0000000005991cc CTR: 0000000000000000 REGS: c0000000148c76a0 TRAP: 0700 Not tainted (6.5.0-rc3+) MSR: 8000000000029033 <SF,EE,ME,IR,DR,RI,LE> CR: 24002242 XER: 0000000c CFAR: c0000000001fbd34 IRQMASK: 0 [ ... GPRs omitted ... ] NIP usercopy_abort+0xa0/0xb0 LR usercopy_abort+0x9c/0xb0 Call Trace: usercopy_abort+0x9c/0xb0 (unreliable) __check_heap_object+0x1b4/0x1d0 __check_object_size+0x2d0/0x380 rtas_flash_write+0xe4/0x250 proc_reg_write+0xfc/0x160 vfs_write+0xfc/0x4e0 ksys_write+0x90/0x160 system_call_exception+0x178/0x320 system_call_common+0x160/0x2c4 The blocks of the firmware image are copied directly from user memory to objects allocated from flash_block_cache, so flash_block_cache must be created using kmem_cache_create_usercopy() to mark it safe for user access. [mpe: Trim and indent oops]
EPSS: 0.002 (5.0th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.
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.
Affected products
- Linux — versions 6d07d1cd300f4c7e16005f881fea388164999cc8, 4.16, 0
- Linux Linux_kernel — versions 6.5
References
- 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67 (Patch)
- 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67 (Patch)
- 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67 (Patch)
- 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67 (Patch)
- 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67 (Patch)
- 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67 (Patch)
- 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67 (Patch)
Frequently asked questions
- What is CVE-2023-53487?
- CVE-2023-53487 is a high-severity vulnerability in Linux. CVSS score: 7.8/10. Published 2025-10-01.
- How severe is CVE-2023-53487?
- High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.8 out of 10.