CVE-2023-53149

MEDIUM EPSS 1.5%
Published Sep 15, 20259mo ago · Modified Jun 17, 20261w ago
5.5 CVSS 3.1
Medium
Find Similar
Published Sep 15, 2025 9mo ago
Last Modified Jun 17, 2026 1w ago

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ext4: avoid deadlock in fs reclaim with page writeback Ext4 has a filesystem wide lock protecting ext4_writepages() calls to avoid races with switching of journalled data flag or inode format. This lock can however cause a deadlock like: CPU0 CPU1 ext4_writepages() percpu_down_read(sbi->s_writepages_rwsem); ext4_change_inode_journal_flag() percpu_down_write(sbi->s_writepages_rwsem); - blocks, all readers block from now on ext4_do_writepages() ext4_init_io_end() kmem_cache_zalloc(io_end_cachep, GFP_KERNEL) fs_reclaim frees dentry... dentry_unlink_inode() iput() - last ref => iput_final() - inode dirty => write_inode_now()... ext4_writepages() tries to acquire sbi->s_writepages_rwsem and blocks forever Make sure we cannot recurse into filesystem reclaim from writeback code to avoid the deadlock.

CVSS Details

Base Score
5.5
Exploitability
1.8
Impact
3.6
Vector string
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Attack Vector Local
Attack Complexity Low
Privileges Required Low
User Interaction None
Scope Unchanged
Confidentiality None
Integrity None
Availability High

Threat Intelligence

EPSS Exploit Probability
1.5% percentile
Exploit & Patch Status
No Known Exploit
Patch Available

Weaknesses 1

CWE-667

Affected Products 3

VendorProductVersionRange
linuxlinux_kernel*≥4.7  –  <6.2.16
linuxlinux_kernel*≥6.3  –  <6.3.3
linuxlinux_kernel6.4any

References 3

  • git.kernel.org https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/00d873c17e29cc32d90ca852b82685f1673acaa5
    Patch
  • git.kernel.org https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/2ec97dc90df40c50e509809dc9a198638a7e18b6
    Patch
  • git.kernel.org https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/4b4340bf04ce9a52061f15000ecedd126abc093c
    Patch

Remediation

  • git.kernel.org https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/00d873c17e29cc32d90ca852b82685f1673acaa5
    Patch
  • git.kernel.org https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/2ec97dc90df40c50e509809dc9a198638a7e18b6
    Patch
  • git.kernel.org https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/4b4340bf04ce9a52061f15000ecedd126abc093c
    Patch