Bug 2400711 (CVE-2023-53501)

Summary: CVE-2023-53501 kernel: Linux kernel: Denial of Service due to race condition in IOMMU pasid unbinding
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security <prodsec-ir-bot>
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Priority: low    
Version: unspecifiedKeywords: Security
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OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's iommu/amd/iommu_v2 component. A local attacker with low privileges could exploit a race condition during pasid unbinding when outstanding page faults exist. This vulnerability causes a reference count to incorrectly decrement to zero, leading to a memory leak and ultimately a Denial of Service (DoS).
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2025-10-01 12:03:00 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

iommu/amd/iommu_v2: Fix pasid_state refcount dec hit 0 warning on pasid unbind

When unbinding pasid - a race condition exists vs outstanding page faults.

To prevent this, the pasid_state object contains a refcount.
    * set to 1 on pasid bind
    * incremented on each ppr notification start
    * decremented on each ppr notification done
    * decremented on pasid unbind

Since refcount_dec assumes that refcount will never reach 0:
  the current implementation causes the following to be invoked on
  pasid unbind:
        REFCOUNT_WARN("decrement hit 0; leaking memory")

Fix this issue by changing refcount_dec to refcount_dec_and_test
to explicitly handle refcount=1.