CVE-2023-0458: Spectre V1 Gadget in do_prlimit in the Linux Kernel

Severity: medium (CVSS 4.7 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2023-04-26 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-476

Description

A speculative pointer dereference problem exists in the Linux Kernel on the do_prlimit() function. The resource argument value is controlled and is used in pointer arithmetic for the 'rlim' variable and can be used to leak the contents. We recommend upgrading past version 6.1.8 or commit 739790605705ddcf18f21782b9c99ad7d53a8c11

Affected products

Debian Linux: 10.0
Linux kernel: before 6.1.8; 6.2-rc1, 6.2-rc2, 6.2-rc3, 6.2-rc4 — fixed in 6.1.8

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.1.8. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/diff/kernel/sys.c?id=v6.1.8&id2=v6.1.7
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/739790605705ddcf18f21782b9c99ad7d53a8c11
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2023/05/msg00005.html
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2023/05/msg00006.html
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/diff/kernel/sys.c?id=v6.1.8&id2=v6.1.7
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/739790605705ddcf18f21782b9c99ad7d53a8c11
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2023/05/msg00005.html
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2023/05/msg00006.html

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