Vulnerability in Linux

CVE-2023-54062

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ext4: fix invalid free tracking in ext4_xattr_move_to_block() In ext4_xattr_move_to_block(), the value of the extended attribute which we need to move to an external block may be allocated by kvmalloc() if the value is stored in an external inode. So at the end of the function the code tried to check if this was the case by testing entry->e_value_inum. However, at this point, the pointer to the xattr entry is no longer valid, because it was removed from the original location where it had been stored. So we could end up calling kvfree() on a pointer which was not allocated by kvmalloc(); or we could also potentially leak memory by not freeing the buffer when it should be freed. Fix this by storing whether it should be freed in a separate variable.

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 (4.6th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 5th percentile — 4.6% 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-2023-54062: 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 d738789ae9ec47d3458a008788f3cdc862ebf0cb, 6.2.3, 5.15.112

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2023-54062?
CVE-2023-54062 is a high-severity vulnerability in Linux. CVSS score: 7.8/10. Published 2025-12-24.
How severe is CVE-2023-54062?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.8 out of 10.