vulnerability

Red Hat: CVE-2023-53260: kernel: ovl: fix null pointer dereference in ovl_permission() (Multiple Advisories)

Severity
5
CVSS
(AV:L/AC:L/Au:S/C:N/I:N/A:C)
Published
Sep 15, 2025
Added
Nov 14, 2025
Modified
Dec 3, 2025

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

ovl: fix null pointer dereference in ovl_permission()

Following process:
P1 P2
path_lookupat
link_path_walk
inode_permission
ovl_permission
ovl_i_path_real(inode, &realpath)
path->dentry = ovl_i_dentry_upper(inode)
drop_cache
__dentry_kill(ovl_dentry)
iput(ovl_inode)
ovl_destroy_inode(ovl_inode)
dput(oi->__upperdentry)
dentry_kill(upperdentry)
dentry_unlink_inode
upperdentry->d_inode = NULL
realinode = d_inode(realpath.dentry) // return NULL
inode_permission(realinode)
inode->i_sb // NULL pointer dereference
, will trigger an null pointer dereference at realinode:
[ 335.664979] BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference,
address: 0000000000000002
[ 335.668032] CPU: 0 PID: 2592 Comm: ls Not tainted 6.3.0
[ 335.669956] RIP: 0010:inode_permission+0x33/0x2c0
[ 335.678939] Call Trace:
[ 335.679165] <TASK>
[ 335.679371] ovl_permission+0xde/0x320
[ 335.679723] inode_permission+0x15e/0x2c0
[ 335.680090] link_path_walk+0x115/0x550
[ 335.680771] path_lookupat.isra.0+0xb2/0x200
[ 335.681170] filename_lookup+0xda/0x240
[ 335.681922] vfs_statx+0xa6/0x1f0
[ 335.682233] vfs_fstatat+0x7b/0xb0

Fetch a reproducer in [Link].

Use the helper ovl_i_path_realinode() to get realinode and then do
non-nullptr checking.

Solutions

redhat-upgrade-kernelredhat-upgrade-kernel-rt
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