What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2023-54146: x86/kexec: Fix double-free of elf header buffer

• Severity: unknown
• 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: 2025-12-24 · updated 2026-06-17

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: x86/kexec: Fix double-free of elf header buffer After b3e34a47f989 ("x86/kexec: fix memory leak of elf header buffer"), freeing image->elf_headers in the error path of crash_load_segments() is not needed because kimage_file_post_load_cleanup() will take care of that later. And not clearing it could result in a double-free. Drop the superfluous vfree() call at the error path of crash_load_segments().

Affected products

• Linux kernel: from 5.15.46 before 5.15.87; from 5.17.14 before 5.18; from 5.18.3 before 5.19; 5.19 — fixed in 5.15.87, 5.18, 5.19, 6.2

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 5.15.87, 5.18, 5.19, 6.2. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/4c71a552b97fb4f46eb300224434fe56fcf4f254
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/554a880a1fff46dd5a355dec21cd77d542a0ddf2
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/5bd3c7abeb69fb4133418b846a1c6dc11313d6f0
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/d00dd2f2645dca04cf399d8fc692f3f69b6dd996
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/fbdbf8ac333d3d47c0d9ea81d7d445654431d100

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