What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2023-53116: nvmet: avoid potential UAF in nvmet_req_complete()

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2025-05-02 · updated 2026-10-15
• Weakness: CWE-416

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: nvmet: avoid potential UAF in nvmet_req_complete() An nvme target ->queue_response() operation implementation may free the request passed as argument. Such implementation potentially could result in a use after free of the request pointer when percpu_ref_put() is called in nvmet_req_complete(). Avoid such problem by using a local variable to save the sq pointer before calling __nvmet_req_complete(), thus avoiding dereferencing the req pointer after that function call.

Affected products

• Linux kernel: from 4.8 before 4.14.311; from 4.15 before 4.19.279; from 4.20 before 5.4.238; from 5.5 before 5.10.176; from 5.11 before 5.15.104; from 5.16 before 6.1.21 — fixed in 4.14.311, 4.19.279, 5.10.176, 5.15.104, 5.4.238, 6.1.21

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 4.14.311, 4.19.279, 5.10.176, 5.15.104. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/04c394208831d5e0d5cfee46722eb0f033cd4083
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/6173a77b7e9d3e202bdb9897b23f2a8afe7bf286
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/8ed9813871038b25a934b21ab76b5b7dbf44fc3a
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a6317235da8aa7cb97529ebc8121cc2a4c4c437a
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/bcd535f07c58342302a2cd2bdd8894fe0872c8a9
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e5d99b29012bbf0e86929403209723b2806500c1
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/f1d5888a5efe345b63c430b256e95acb0a475642
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/fafcb4b26393870c45462f9af6a48e581dbbcf7e

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