CVE-2023-53167: 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: tracing: Fix null pointer dereference in tracing_err_log_open() Fix an issue in function 'tracing_err_log_open'. The function doesn't call 'seq_open' if the file is opened only with write permissions, which results in 'file->private_data' being left as null. If we then use 'lseek' on that opened file, 'seq_lseek' dereferences 'file->private_data' in 'mutex_lock(&m->lock)', resulting in a kernel panic. Writing to this node requires root privileges, therefore this bug has very little security impact. Tracefs node: /sys/kernel/tracing/error_log Example Kernel panic: Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 0000000000000038 Call trace: mutex_lock+0x30/0x110 seq_lseek+0x34/0xb8 __arm64_sys_lseek+0x6c/0xb8 invoke_syscall+0x58/0x13c el0_svc_common+0xc4/0x10c do_el0_svc+0x24/0x98 el0_svc+0x24/0x88 el0t_64_sync_handler+0x84/0xe4 el0t_64_sync+0x1b4/0x1b8 Code: d503201f aa0803e0 aa1f03e1 aa0103e9 (c8e97d02) ---[ end trace 561d1b49c12cf8a5 ]--- Kernel panic - not syncing: Oops: Fatal exception

Affected products

• Linux Linux Kernel: from 5.2, before 5.4.251 (fixed in 5.4.251); from 5.5, before 5.10.188 (fixed in 5.10.188); from 5.11, before 5.15.121 (fixed in 5.15.121); from 5.16, before 6.1.40 (fixed in 6.1.40); from 6.2, before 6.4.5 (fixed in 6.4.5)

Published 2025-09-15. Last modified 2026-06-17.