CVE-2023-53561

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

net: wwan: iosm: fix NULL pointer dereference when removing device

In suspend and resume cycle, the removal and rescan of device ends up in NULL pointer dereference.

During driver initialization, if the ipc_imem_wwan_channel_init() fails to get the valid device capabilities it returns an error and further no resource (wwan struct) will be allocated. Now in this situation if driver removal procedure is initiated it would result in NULL pointer exception since unallocated wwan struct is dereferenced inside ipc_wwan_deinit().

ipc_imem_run_state_worker() to handle the called functions return value and to release the resource in failure case. It also reports the link down event in failure cases. The user space application can handle this event to do a device reset for restoring the device communication.

The bug is a NULL pointer dereference in the iosm WWAN driver during device removal after a failed initialization, leading to a local kernel crash (DoS). Exploitation requires local ability to trigger suspend/resume or device rescans with the affected hardware. There is no confidentiality or integrity impact. Risk is primarily availability on systems using Intel IOSM WWAN devices.

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.