In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: drm/i915: Fix request ref counting during error capture & debugfs dump When GuC support was added to error capture, the reference counting around the request object was broken. Fix it up. The context based search manages the spinlocking around the search internally. So it needs to grab the reference count internally as well. The execlist only request based search relies on external locking, so it needs an external reference count but within the spinlock not outside it. The only other caller of the context based search is the code for dumping engine state to debugfs. That code wasn't previously getting an explicit reference at all as it does everything while holding the execlist specific spinlock. So, that needs updaing as well as that spinlock doesn't help when using GuC submission. Rather than trying to conditionally get/put depending on submission model, just change it to always do the get/put. v2: Explicitly document adding an extra blank line in some dense code (Andy Shevchenko). Fix multiple potential null pointer derefs in case of no request found (some spotted by Tvrtko, but there was more!). Also fix a leaked request in case of !started and another in __guc_reset_context now that intel_context_find_active_request is actually reference counting the returned request. v3: Add a _get suffix to intel_context_find_active_request now that it grabs a reference (Daniele). v4: Split the intel_guc_find_hung_context change to a separate patch and rename intel_context_find_active_request_get to intel_context_get_active_request (Tvrtko). v5: s/locking/reference counting/ in commit message (Tvrtko) (cherry picked from commit 3700e353781e27f1bc7222f51f2cc36cbeb9b4ec)
Conclusion & alert: CVE-2023-52981 is rated Low Risk (23.2/100): CVSS Medium severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.02%). Mandatory action: Monitor for updates and reassess as exploit intelligence or EPSS changes.
Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.
EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).
| # | Date | Old EPSS score | New EPSS score | Delta (New - Old) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2026-05-10 | 0.09% | 0.02% | -0.07% |
| 2 | 2026-05-07 | 0.16% | 0.09% | -0.07% |
| 3 | 2026-05-05 | — | 0.16% | — |
Full EPSS history (5 records total)
CVSS metrics for this CVE.
| Base score | Version | Severity | Vector | Exploitability | Impact | Score source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5.5 | 3.1 | MEDIUM |
|
1.8 | 3.6 | [email protected] |
| vendor | priority | summary | link |
|---|---|---|---|
debian
|
unimportant | CVE-2023-52981 unimportant priority: Debian including 1 source packages (linux), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5. | https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2023-52981 |
redhat
|
low | — | https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2023-52981 |
suse
|
medium | — | https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2023-52981/ |
ubuntu
|
medium | CVE-2023-52981 medium priority: Ubuntu including 158 source packages (linux, linux-allwinner-5.19, …), 1551 status rows across 10 suites (bionic, focal, jammy, noble, oracular, plucky, questing, trusty, upstream, xenial): DNE 1145, ignored 146, not-affected 135, released 92, needed 33. | https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2023-52981 |
| Vendor | Product | Version | Raw CPE |
|---|---|---|---|
| linux | linux_kernel | >= 5.15, < 6.1.11 | cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| linux | linux_kernel | 6.2 | cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.2:rc1:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| linux | linux_kernel | 6.2 | cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.2:rc2:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| linux | linux_kernel | 6.2 | cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.2:rc3:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| linux | linux_kernel | 6.2 | cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.2:rc4:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| linux | linux_kernel | 6.2 | cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.2:rc5:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| linux | linux_kernel | 6.2 | cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.2:rc6:*:*:*:*:*:* |