CVE-2023-52855: usb: dwc2: fix possible NULL pointer dereference caused by driver concurrency

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2024-05-21 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-476

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: usb: dwc2: fix possible NULL pointer dereference caused by driver concurrency In _dwc2_hcd_urb_enqueue(), "urb->hcpriv = NULL" is executed without holding the lock "hsotg->lock". In _dwc2_hcd_urb_dequeue(): spin_lock_irqsave(&hsotg->lock, flags); ... if (!urb->hcpriv) { dev_dbg(hsotg->dev, "## urb->hcpriv is NULL ##\n"); goto out; } rc = dwc2_hcd_urb_dequeue(hsotg, urb->hcpriv); // Use urb->hcpriv ... out: spin_unlock_irqrestore(&hsotg->lock, flags); When _dwc2_hcd_urb_enqueue() and _dwc2_hcd_urb_dequeue() are concurrently executed, the NULL check of "urb->hcpriv" can be executed before "urb->hcpriv = NULL". After urb->hcpriv is NULL, it can be used in the function call to dwc2_hcd_urb_dequeue(), which can cause a NULL pointer dereference. This possible bug is found by an experimental static analysis tool developed by myself. This tool analyzes the locking APIs to extract function pairs that can be concurrently executed, and then analyzes the instructions in the paired functions to identify possible concurrency bugs including data races and atomicity violations. The above possible bug is reported, when my tool analyzes the source code of Linux 6.5. To fix this possible bug, "urb->hcpriv = NULL" should be executed with holding the lock "hsotg->lock". After using this patch, my tool never reports the possible bug, with the kernelconfiguration allyesconfig for x86_64. Because I have no associated hardware, I cannot test the patch in runtime testing, and just verify it according to the code logic.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 4.2 before 4.14.330; from 4.15 before 4.19.299; from 4.20 before 5.4.261; from 5.5 before 5.10.201; from 5.11 before 5.15.139; from 5.16 before 6.1.63 — fixed in 4.14.330, 4.19.299, 5.10.201, 5.15.139, 5.4.261, 6.1.63

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 4.14.330, 4.19.299, 5.10.201, 5.15.139. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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