CVE-2023-53614: Linux Kernel

Medium severity, CVSS 4.7. EPSS: 0.1% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/ksm: fix race with VMA iteration and mm_struct teardown exit_mmap() will tear down the VMAs and maple tree with the mmap_lock held in write mode. Ensure that the maple tree is still valid by checking ksm_test_exit() after taking the mmap_lock in read mode, but before the for_each_vma() iterator dereferences a destroyed maple tree. Since the maple tree is destroyed, the flags telling lockdep to check an external lock has been cleared. Skip the for_each_vma() iterator to avoid dereferencing a maple tree without the external lock flag, which would create a lockdep warning.

Affected products

• Linux Linux Kernel: from 6.1, before 6.1.22 (fixed in 6.1.22); from 6.2, before 6.2.9 (fixed in 6.2.9); version 6.3 only

Published 2025-10-04. Last modified 2026-06-17.