CVE-2023-53011 [Medium] | Security Vulnerability in Linux Kernel

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: stmmac: enable all safety features by default In the original implementation of dwmac5 commit 8bf993a5877e ("net: stmmac: Add support for DWMAC5 and implement Safety Features") all safety features were enabled by default. Later it seems some implementations didn't have support for all the features, so in commit 5ac712dcdfef ("net: stmmac: enable platform specific safety features") the safety_feat_cfg structure was added to the callback and defined for some platforms to selectively enable these safety features. The problem is that only certain platforms were given that software support. If the automotive safety package bit is set in the hardware features register the safety feature callback is called for the platform, and for platforms that didn't get a safety_feat_cfg defined this results in the following NULL pointer dereference: [ 7.933303] Call trace: [ 7.935812] dwmac5_safety_feat_config+0x20/0x170 [stmmac] [ 7.941455] __stmmac_open+0x16c/0x474 [stmmac] [ 7.946117] stmmac_open+0x38/0x70 [stmmac] [ 7.950414] __dev_open+0x100/0x1dc [ 7.954006] __dev_change_flags+0x18c/0x204 [ 7.958297] dev_change_flags+0x24/0x6c [ 7.962237] do_setlink+0x2b8/0xfa4 [ 7.965827] __rtnl_newlink+0x4ec/0x840 [ 7.969766] rtnl_newlink+0x50/0x80 [ 7.973353] rtnetlink_rcv_msg+0x12c/0x374 [ 7.977557] netlink_rcv_skb+0x5c/0x130 [ 7.981500] rtnetlink_rcv+0x18/0x2c [ 7.985172] netlink_unicast+0x2e8/0x340 [ 7.989197] netlink_sendmsg+0x1a8/0x420 [ 7.993222] ____sys_sendmsg+0x218/0x280 [ 7.997249] ___sys_sendmsg+0xac/0x100 [ 8.001103] __sys_sendmsg+0x84/0xe0 [ 8.004776] __arm64_sys_sendmsg+0x24/0x30 [ 8.008983] invoke_syscall+0x48/0x114 [ 8.012840] el0_svc_common.constprop.0+0xcc/0xec [ 8.017665] do_el0_svc+0x38/0xb0 [ 8.021071] el0_svc+0x2c/0x84 [ 8.024212] el0t_64_sync_handler+0xf4/0x120 [ 8.028598] el0t_64_sync+0x190/0x194 Go back to the original behavior, if the automotive safety package is found to be supported in hardware enable all the features unless safety_feat_cfg is passed in saying this particular platform only supports a subset of the features.

#	Date	Old EPSS score	New EPSS score	Delta (New - Old)
1	2026-05-07	0.13%	0.04%	-0.09%
2	2026-05-05	0.02%	0.13%	+0.11%
3	2025-03-28	—	0.02%	—

Date

Old EPSS score

New EPSS score

Delta (New - Old)

2026-05-07

0.13%

0.04%

-0.09%

2026-05-05

0.02%

0.13%

+0.11%

2025-03-28

—

0.02%

—

Base score	Version	Severity	Vector	Exploitability	Impact	Score source
5.5	3.1	MEDIUM	`CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H` Click to expand Attack vector (AV:L) They already need access on the box, or another person has to do something wrong; it’s not a remote drive-by. Attack complexity (AC:L) Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup. Privileges required (PR:L) A normal user session is enough; they don’t have to be admin. User interaction (UI:N) Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping. Scope (S:U) Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems. Confidentiality (C:N) Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way. Integrity (I:N) Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged. Availability (A:H) Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.	1.8	3.6	[email protected]
5.5	3.1	MEDIUM	`CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H` Click to expand Attack vector (AV:L) They already need access on the box, or another person has to do something wrong; it’s not a remote drive-by. Attack complexity (AC:L) Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup. Privileges required (PR:L) A normal user session is enough; they don’t have to be admin. User interaction (UI:N) Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping. Scope (S:U) Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems. Confidentiality (C:N) Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way. Integrity (I:N) Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged. Availability (A:H) Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.	1.8	3.6	134c704f-9b21-4f2e-91b3-4a467353bcc0

Base score

Version

Severity

Vector

Exploitability

Impact

Score source

5.5

3.1

MEDIUM

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H Click to expand

Attack vector (AV:L): They already need access on the box, or another person has to do something wrong; it’s not a remote drive-by.
Attack complexity (AC:L): Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:L): A normal user session is enough; they don’t have to be admin.
User interaction (UI:N): Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U): Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N): Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:N): Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:H): Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.

1.8

3.6

[email protected]

5.5

3.1

MEDIUM

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H Click to expand

Attack vector (AV:L): They already need access on the box, or another person has to do something wrong; it’s not a remote drive-by.
Attack complexity (AC:L): Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:L): A normal user session is enough; they don’t have to be admin.
User interaction (UI:N): Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U): Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N): Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:N): Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:H): Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.

1.8

3.6

134c704f-9b21-4f2e-91b3-4a467353bcc0

OS Trackers for CVE-2023-53011

vendor	priority	summary	link
`debian`	unimportant	CVE-2023-53011 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-2023-53011
`redhat`	low	—	https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2023-53011
`suse`	medium	CVE-2023-53011 severity moderate: SUSE including 26 source package names (cluster-md-kmp-default, dlm-kmp-default, …), 192 product×package rows across 34 product lines (SLES-LTSS-TERADATA 15 SP2, SUSE Linux Enterprise High Performance Computing 15 SP3-LTSS, … (34 product lines)): Known Not Affected 192.	https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2023-53011/
`ubuntu`	medium	CVE-2023-53011 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 143, released 116, needs-triage 1.	https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2023-53011

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2023-53011

Vendor	Product	Version	Raw CPE
linux	linux_kernel	>= 5.14, < 5.15.91	cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel::::::::
linux	linux_kernel	>= 5.16, < 6.1.9	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::::::

References for CVE-2023-53011

URL	Tags
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/120b8e527e07c65de7f2b9018dcd9d17e66f2427	Patch
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/aebf7e62708ba706ee7bf484c9023b15c214e92a	Patch
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/fdfc76a116b5e9d3e98e6c96fe83b42d011d21d4	Patch

URL

CVE-2023-53011 | net: stmmac: enable all safety features by default

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2023-53011

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2023-53011

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2023-53011

OS Trackers for CVE-2023-53011

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2023-53011

References for CVE-2023-53011