CVE-2023-53596: drivers: base: Free devm resources when unregistering a device

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: 2025-10-04 · updated 2026-06-18
Weakness: CWE-415

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: drivers: base: Free devm resources when unregistering a device In the current code, devres_release_all() only gets called if the device has a bus and has been probed. This leads to issues when using bus-less or driver-less devices where the device might never get freed if a managed resource holds a reference to the device. This is happening in the DRM framework for example. We should thus call devres_release_all() in the device_del() function to make sure that the device-managed actions are properly executed when the device is unregistered, even if it has neither a bus nor a driver. This is effectively the same change than commit 2f8d16a996da ("devres: release resources on device_del()") that got reverted by commit a525a3ddeaca ("driver core: free devres in device_release") over memory leaks concerns. This patch effectively combines the two commits mentioned above to release the resources both on device_del() and device_release() and get the best of both worlds.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 3.7 before 5.10.258; from 5.11 before 5.15.209; from 5.16 before 6.1.53; from 6.2 before 6.4.16; from 6.5 before 6.5.3 — fixed in 5.10.258, 5.15.209, 6.1.53, 6.4.16, 6.5.3

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 5.10.258, 5.15.209, 6.1.53, 6.4.16. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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