CVE-2023-52596: Linux Kernel

Medium severity, CVSS 5.5. EPSS: 0.2% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: sysctl: Fix out of bounds access for empty sysctl registers When registering tables to the sysctl subsystem there is a check to see if header is a permanently empty directory (used for mounts). This check evaluates the first element of the ctl_table. This results in an out of bounds evaluation when registering empty directories. The function register_sysctl_mount_point now passes a ctl_table of size 1 instead of size 0. It now relies solely on the type to identify a permanently empty register. Make sure that the ctl_table has at least one element before testing for permanent emptiness.

Affected products

• Linux Linux Kernel: before 6.6.16 (fixed in 6.6.16); from 6.7, before 6.7.4 (fixed in 6.7.4)

Published 2024-03-06. Last modified 2026-06-17.