Vulnerability in Linux

CVE-2023-54220

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: serial: 8250: Fix oops for port->pm on uart_change_pm() Unloading a hardware specific 8250 driver can produce error "Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address" about ten seconds after unloading the driver. This happens on uart_hangup() calling uart_change_pm(). Turns out commit 04e82793f068 ("serial: 8250: Reinit port->pm on port specific driver unbind") was only a partial fix. If the hardware specific driver has initialized port->pm function, we need to clear port->pm too. Just reinitializing port->ops does not do this. Otherwise serial8250_pm() will call port->pm() instead of serial8250_do_pm().

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 (3.9th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 4th percentile — 3.9% 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-2023-54220: 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 6.4, 6.5, af4d6dbb1a92ea424ad1ba1d0c88c7fa2345d872

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2023-54220?
CVE-2023-54220 is a high-severity vulnerability in Linux. CVSS score: 7.8/10. Published 2025-12-30.
How severe is CVE-2023-54220?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.8 out of 10.