CVE-2023-53250
kernel: firmware: dmi-sysfs: Fix null-ptr-deref in dmi_sysfs_register_handle
Severity
LowRed Hat Product Security
CVSS 3.1
Review impact separately from score.
Published · September 15, 2025
Updated · June 30, 2026
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
firmware: dmi-sysfs: Fix null-ptr-deref in dmi_sysfs_register_handle
KASAN reported a null-ptr-deref error:
KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x0000000000000008-0x000000000000000f] CPU: 0 PID: 1373 Comm: modprobe Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996) RIP: 0010:dmi_sysfs_entry_release ... Call Trace: <TASK> kobject_put dmi_sysfs_register_handle (drivers/firmware/dmi-sysfs.c:540) dmi_sysfs dmi_decode_table (drivers/firmware/dmi_scan.c:133) dmi_walk (drivers/firmware/dmi_scan.c:1115) dmi_sysfs_init (drivers/firmware/dmi-sysfs.c:149) dmi_sysfs do_one_initcall (init/main.c:1296) ... Kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal exception Kernel Offset: 0x4000000 from 0xffffffff81000000 ---[ end Kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal exception ]---
It is because previous patch added kobject_put() to release the memory which will call dmi_sysfs_entry_release() and list_del().
However, list_add_tail(entry->list) is called after the error block, so the list_head is uninitialized and cannot be deleted.
Move error handling to after list_add_tail to fix this.
CVSS score applicability
The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.
Mitigation
No mitigation is specified in collected source.
CVSS / CWE
CVSS 3.1 · 5.5CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CWE-476 · NULL Pointer Dereference