CVE-2023-54317

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's dm-flakey device mapper target. When the corrupt bio writes option is enabled, dm-flakey can corrupt the kernel's global zero page. Since the zero page is shared system-wide and used by glibc's calloc() implementation via mmap, corrupting it causes userspace programs to receive non-zeroed memory from calloc(), leading to widespread application crashes and unpredictable behavior.

The dm-flakey target is a testing and debugging tool designed to simulate unreliable storage devices. While corrupting the zero page has severe system-wide consequences, dm-flakey requires root privileges to configure and is not typically used in production environments. The impact is limited to systems actively using dm-flakey with corrupt bio writes enabled.

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.