Bug 2395695 (CVE-2023-53281)

Summary: CVE-2023-53281 kernel: drivers: staging: rtl8723bs: Fix locking in _rtw_join_timeout_handler()
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 2025-09-16 09:04:13 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

drivers: staging: rtl8723bs: Fix locking in _rtw_join_timeout_handler()

Commit 041879b12ddb ("drivers: staging: rtl8192bs: Fix deadlock in
rtw_joinbss_event_prehandle()") besides fixing the deadlock also
modified _rtw_join_timeout_handler() to use spin_[un]lock_irq()
instead of spin_[un]lock_bh().

_rtw_join_timeout_handler() calls rtw_do_join() which takes
pmlmepriv->scanned_queue.lock using spin_[un]lock_bh(). This
spin_unlock_bh() call re-enables softirqs which triggers an oops in
kernel/softirq.c: __local_bh_enable_ip() when it calls
lockdep_assert_irqs_enabled():

[  244.506087] WARNING: CPU: 2 PID: 0 at kernel/softirq.c:376 __local_bh_enable_ip+0xa6/0x100
...
[  244.509022] Call Trace:
[  244.509048]  <IRQ>
[  244.509100]  _rtw_join_timeout_handler+0x134/0x170 [r8723bs]
[  244.509468]  ? __pfx__rtw_join_timeout_handler+0x10/0x10 [r8723bs]
[  244.509772]  ? __pfx__rtw_join_timeout_handler+0x10/0x10 [r8723bs]
[  244.510076]  call_timer_fn+0x95/0x2a0
[  244.510200]  __run_timers.part.0+0x1da/0x2d0

This oops is causd by the switch to spin_[un]lock_irq() which disables
the IRQs for the entire duration of _rtw_join_timeout_handler().

Disabling the IRQs is not necessary since all code taking this lock
runs from either user contexts or from softirqs, switch back to
spin_[un]lock_bh() to fix this.