What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2023-53662: ext4: fix memory leaks in ext4_fname_{setup_filename,prepare_lookup}

• 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: 2025-10-07 · updated 2026-10-28
• Weakness: CWE-401

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ext4: fix memory leaks in ext4_fname_{setup_filename,prepare_lookup} If the filename casefolding fails, we'll be leaking memory from the fscrypt_name struct, namely from the 'crypto_buf.name' member. Make sure we free it in the error path on both ext4_fname_setup_filename() and ext4_fname_prepare_lookup() functions.

Affected products

• Linux kernel: from 5.13 before 6.1.54; from 6.2 before 6.5.4 — fixed in 6.1.54, 6.5.4

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.1.54, 6.5.4. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/1fb3f1bbfdb511034b0360dbeb0f6a8424ed2a5c
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/36daf050be3f6f067631dc52054de2d3b7cc849f
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7ca4b085f430f3774c3838b3da569ceccd6a0177
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/98fc9c2cc45cfcb56961a73de3ec69b474063fc0

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