CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2023-53614 — Linux Linux Kernel security vulnerability

Medium CVSS 4.7

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/ksm: fix race with VMA iteration and mm_struct teardown exit_mmap() will tear down the VMAs and maple tree with the mmap_lock held in write mode. Ensure that the maple tree is still valid by checking ksm_test_exit() after taking the mmap_lock in read mode, but before the for_each_vma() iterator dereferences a destroyed maple tree. Since the maple tree is destroyed, the flags telling lockdep to check an external lock has been cleared. Skip the for_each_vma() iterator to avoid dereferencing a maple tree without the external lock flag, which would create a lockdep warning.

Severity
Medium
CVSS
4.7 (3.1)
Published
2025-10-04
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
linux/kernel
Weaknesses
CWE-362

Affected products

  • linux / linux_kernel
  • linux / linux_kernel / 6.3

Showing 2 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

This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.

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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