CVE-2023-53856

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

of: overlay: Call of_changeset_init() early

When of_overlay_fdt_apply() fails, the changeset may be partially applied, and the caller is still expected to call of_overlay_remove() to clean up this partial state.

However, of_overlay_apply() calls of_resolve_phandles() before init_overlay_changeset(). Hence if the overlay fails to apply due to an unresolved symbol, the overlay_changeset.cset.entries list is still uninitialized, and cleanup will crash with a NULL-pointer dereference in overlay_removal_is_ok().

Fix this by moving the call to of_changeset_init() from init_overlay_changeset() to of_overlay_fdt_apply(), where all other early initialization is done.

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.