CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2023-52872 — Linux Linux Kernel security vulnerability

Medium CVSS 5.5

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: tty: n_gsm: fix race condition in status line change on dead connections gsm_cleanup_mux() cleans up the gsm by closing all DLCIs, stopping all timers, removing the virtual tty devices and clearing the data queues. This procedure, however, may cause subsequent changes of the virtual modem status lines of a DLCI. More data is being added the outgoing data queue and the deleted kick timer is restarted to handle this. At this point many resources have already been removed by the cleanup procedure. Thus, a kernel panic occurs. Fix this by proving in gsm_modem_update() that the cleanup procedure has not been started and the mux is still alive. Note that writing to a virtual tty is already protected by checks against the DLCI specific connection state.

Severity
Medium
CVSS
5.5 (3.1)
Published
2024-05-21
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
linux/kernel
Weaknesses
CWE-362

Affected products

  • linux / linux_kernel

Showing 1 representative product identities from 5 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.

Matched remediation archetype

Race condition, TOCTOU, and lifecycle synchronization

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Check exposure

  • Map concurrent actors, shared state, lock boundaries, signals, callbacks, retries, and check-then-use sequences in the affected path.
  • Determine whether untrusted users can influence timing, object names, filesystem state, or repeated state transitions.
  • Identify clustered and multi-process behavior that repository-local tests may not represent.

Remediate safely

  • Make the sensitive state transition atomic or protect it with a consistently ordered synchronization primitive.
  • Perform authorization and invariant checks on the same authoritative object and transaction used for the operation.
  • Use unique private resources, safe ownership transfer, and idempotent operations; add deterministic concurrency regression tests.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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