Bug 2395378 (CVE-2023-53250)

Summary: CVE-2023-53250 kernel: firmware: dmi-sysfs: Fix null-ptr-deref in dmi_sysfs_register_handle
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
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OS: Linux   
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2025-09-15 15:10:37 UTC 
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

firmware: dmi-sysfs: Fix null-ptr-deref in dmi_sysfs_register_handle

KASAN reported a null-ptr-deref error:

KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x0000000000000008-0x000000000000000f]
CPU: 0 PID: 1373 Comm: modprobe
Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996)
RIP: 0010:dmi_sysfs_entry_release
...
Call Trace:
 <TASK>
 kobject_put
 dmi_sysfs_register_handle (drivers/firmware/dmi-sysfs.c:540) dmi_sysfs
 dmi_decode_table (drivers/firmware/dmi_scan.c:133)
 dmi_walk (drivers/firmware/dmi_scan.c:1115)
 dmi_sysfs_init (drivers/firmware/dmi-sysfs.c:149) dmi_sysfs
 do_one_initcall (init/main.c:1296)
 ...
Kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal exception
Kernel Offset: 0x4000000 from 0xffffffff81000000
---[ end Kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal exception ]---

It is because previous patch added kobject_put() to release the memory
which will call  dmi_sysfs_entry_release() and list_del().

However, list_add_tail(entry->list) is called after the error block,
so the list_head is uninitialized and cannot be deleted.

Move error handling to after list_add_tail to fix this.
Comment 1 Jon Moroney 2025-09-15 19:04:40 UTC 
Upstream advisory:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/2025091502-CVE-2023-53250-05ea@gregkh/T