CVE-2023-53641: 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: wifi: ath9k: hif_usb: fix memory leak of remain_skbs hif_dev->remain_skb is allocated and used exclusively in ath9k_hif_usb_rx_stream(). It is implied that an allocated remain_skb is processed and subsequently freed (in error paths) only during the next call of ath9k_hif_usb_rx_stream(). So, if the urbs are deallocated between those two calls due to the device deinitialization or suspend, it is possible that ath9k_hif_usb_rx_stream() is not called next time and the allocated remain_skb is leaked. Our local Syzkaller instance was able to trigger that. remain_skb makes sense when receiving two consecutive urbs which are logically linked together, i.e. a specific data field from the first skb indicates a cached skb to be allocated, memcpy'd with some data and subsequently processed in the next call to ath9k_hif_usb_rx_stream(). Urbs deallocation supposedly makes that link irrelevant so we need to free the cached skb in those cases. Fix the leak by introducing a function to explicitly free remain_skb (if it is not NULL) when the rx urbs have been deallocated. remain_skb is NULL when it has not been allocated at all (hif_dev struct is kzalloced) or when it has been processed in next call to ath9k_hif_usb_rx_stream(). Found by Linux Verification Center (linuxtesting.org) with Syzkaller.

Affected products

• Linux Linux Kernel: from 2.6.35, before 4.19.283 (fixed in 4.19.283); from 4.20, before 5.4.243 (fixed in 5.4.243); from 5.5, before 5.10.180 (fixed in 5.10.180); from 5.11, before 5.15.111 (fixed in 5.15.111); from 5.16, before 6.1.28 (fixed in 6.1.28); from 6.2, before 6.2.15 (fixed in 6.2.15); …

Published 2025-10-07. Last modified 2026-06-17.