Bug 2396500 (CVE-2023-53421)

Summary: CVE-2023-53421 kernel: blk-cgroup: Reinit blkg_iostat_set after clearing in blkcg_reset_stats()
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: unspecifiedKeywords: Security
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: ---
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description OSIDB Bzimport 2025-09-18 17:01:49 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

blk-cgroup: Reinit blkg_iostat_set after clearing in blkcg_reset_stats()

When blkg_alloc() is called to allocate a blkcg_gq structure
with the associated blkg_iostat_set's, there are 2 fields within
blkg_iostat_set that requires proper initialization - blkg & sync.
The former field was introduced by commit 3b8cc6298724 ("blk-cgroup:
Optimize blkcg_rstat_flush()") while the later one was introduced by
commit f73316482977 ("blk-cgroup: reimplement basic IO stats using
cgroup rstat").

Unfortunately those fields in the blkg_iostat_set's are not properly
re-initialized when they are cleared in v1's blkcg_reset_stats(). This
can lead to a kernel panic due to NULL pointer access of the blkg
pointer. The missing initialization of sync is less problematic and
can be a problem in a debug kernel due to missing lockdep initialization.

Fix these problems by re-initializing them after memory clearing.