What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2023-53473: ext4: improve error handling from ext4_dirhash()

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 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: 2025-10-01 · updated 2026-10-15

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ext4: improve error handling from ext4_dirhash() The ext4_dirhash() will *almost* never fail, especially when the hash tree feature was first introduced. However, with the addition of support of encrypted, casefolded file names, that function can most certainly fail today. So make sure the callers of ext4_dirhash() properly check for failures, and reflect the errors back up to their callers.

Affected products

• Linux kernel: from 5.2 before 5.15.112; from 5.16 before 6.1.29; from 6.2 before 6.2.16; from 6.3 before 6.3.3; 6.4-rc1 — fixed in 5.15.112, 6.1.29, 6.2.16, 6.3.3

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 5.15.112, 6.1.29, 6.2.16, 6.3.3. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/4b3cb1d108bfc2aebb0d7c8a52261a53cf7f5786
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/70d579aefa652a06af97e013e3fbbabbe5a43553
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/b2531936118deb3f479c4fa1bcd787b74b8faa6a
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c1fae027da61fe8e7eb99f7244297e81bc0f1e43
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/f68876aeef96ef8b708ab10b9cb47ce0a5adb424

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