CVE-2023-53587
kernel: ring-buffer: Sync IRQ works before buffer destruction
Severity
ModerateRed Hat Product Security
CVSS 3.1
Review impact separately from score.
Published · October 4, 2025
Updated · August 5, 2026
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
ring-buffer: Sync IRQ works before buffer destruction
If something was written to the buffer just before destruction, it may be possible (maybe not in a real system, but it did happen in ARCH=um with time-travel) to destroy the ringbuffer before the IRQ work ran, leading this KASAN report (or a crash without KASAN):
BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in irq_work_run_list+0x11a/0x13a
Read of size 8 at addr 000000006d640a48 by task swapper/0
CPU: 0 PID: 0 Comm: swapper Tainted: G W O 6.3.0-rc1 #7
Stack:
60c4f20f 0c203d48 41b58ab3 60f224fc
600477fa 60f35687 60c4f20f 601273dd
00000008 6101eb00 6101eab0 615be548
Call Trace:
[<60047a58>] show_stack+0x25e/0x282
[<60c609e0>] dump_stack_lvl+0x96/0xfd
[<60c50d4c>] print_report+0x1a7/0x5a8
[<603078d3>] kasan_report+0xc1/0xe9
[<60308950>] __asan_report_load8_noabort+0x1b/0x1d
[<60232844>] irq_work_run_list+0x11a/0x13a
[<602328b4>] irq_work_tick+0x24/0x34
[<6017f9dc>] update_process_times+0x162/0x196
[<6019f335>] tick_sched_handle+0x1a4/0x1c3
[<6019fd9e>] tick_sched_timer+0x79/0x10c
[<601812b9>] __hrtimer_run_queues.constprop.0+0x425/0x695
[<60182913>] hrtimer_interrupt+0x16c/0x2c4
[<600486a3>] um_timer+0x164/0x183
[...]
Allocated by task 411:
save_stack_trace+0x99/0xb5
stack_trace_save+0x81/0x9b
kasan_save_stack+0x2d/0x54
kasan_set_track+0x34/0x3e
kasan_save_alloc_info+0x25/0x28
____kasan_kmalloc+0x8b/0x97
__kasan_kmalloc+0x10/0x12
__kmalloc+0xb2/0xe8
load_elf_phdrs+0xee/0x182
[...]
The buggy address belongs to the object at 000000006d640800
which belongs to the cache kmalloc-1k of size 1024
The buggy address is located 584 bytes inside of
freed 1024-byte region [000000006d640800, 000000006d640c00)
Add the appropriate irq_work_sync() so the work finishes before the buffers are destroyed.
Prior to the commit in the Fixes tag below, there was only a single global IRQ work, so this issue didn't exist.
Statement
A race condition between irq_work execution and ring-buffer destruction could trigger a use-after-free in irq_work_run_list(), leading to a kernel crash. Only locally exploitable by privileged users with tracing capabilities (for the CVSS the PR:H).
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 · 4.1CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CWE-667 · Improper Locking