CVE-2023-53856: Linux

EPSS: 0.2% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: of: overlay: Call of_changeset_init() early When of_overlay_fdt_apply() fails, the changeset may be partially applied, and the caller is still expected to call of_overlay_remove() to clean up this partial state. However, of_overlay_apply() calls of_resolve_phandles() before init_overlay_changeset(). Hence if the overlay fails to apply due to an unresolved symbol, the overlay_changeset.cset.entries list is still uninitialized, and cleanup will crash with a NULL-pointer dereference in overlay_removal_is_ok(). Fix this by moving the call to of_changeset_init() from init_overlay_changeset() to of_overlay_fdt_apply(), where all other early initialization is done.

Affected products

• Linux Linux: from 4.15, before 5.15.132 (fixed in 5.15.132); from 5.16, before 6.1.53 (fixed in 6.1.53); from 6.2, before 6.4.16 (fixed in 6.4.16); from 6.5, before 6.5.3 (fixed in 6.5.3)

Published 2025-12-09. Last modified 2026-06-17.