CVE-2023-53087 | drm/i915/active: Fix misuse of non-idle barriers as fence trackers

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: drm/i915/active: Fix misuse of non-idle barriers as fence trackers Users reported oopses on list corruptions when using i915 perf with a number of concurrently running graphics applications. Root cause analysis pointed at an issue in barrier processing code -- a race among perf open / close replacing active barriers with perf requests on kernel context and concurrent barrier preallocate / acquire operations performed during user context first pin / last unpin. When adding a request to a composite tracker, we try to reuse an existing fence tracker, already allocated and registered with that composite. The tracker we obtain may already track another fence, may be an idle barrier, or an active barrier. If the tracker we get occurs a non-idle barrier then we try to delete that barrier from a list of barrier tasks it belongs to. However, while doing that we don't respect return value from a function that performs the barrier deletion. Should the deletion ever fail, we would end up reusing the tracker still registered as a barrier task. Since the same structure field is reused with both fence callback lists and barrier tasks list, list corruptions would likely occur. Barriers are now deleted from a barrier tasks list by temporarily removing the list content, traversing that content with skip over the node to be deleted, then populating the list back with the modified content. Should that intentionally racy concurrent deletion attempts be not serialized, one or more of those may fail because of the list being temporary empty. Related code that ignores the results of barrier deletion was initially introduced in v5.4 by commit d8af05ff38ae ("drm/i915: Allow sharing the idle-barrier from other kernel requests"). However, all users of the barrier deletion routine were apparently serialized at that time, then the issue didn't exhibit itself. Results of git bisect with help of a newly developed igt@gem_barrier_race@remote-request IGT test indicate that list corruptions might start to appear after commit 311770173fac ("drm/i915/gt: Schedule request retirement when timeline idles"), introduced in v5.5. Respect results of barrier deletion attempts -- mark the barrier as idle only if successfully deleted from the list. Then, before proceeding with setting our fence as the one currently tracked, make sure that the tracker we've got is not a non-idle barrier. If that check fails then don't use that tracker but go back and try to acquire a new, usable one. v3: use unlikely() to document what outcome we expect (Andi), - fix bad grammar in commit description. v2: no code changes, - blame commit 311770173fac ("drm/i915/gt: Schedule request retirement when timeline idles"), v5.5, not commit d8af05ff38ae ("drm/i915: Allow sharing the idle-barrier from other kernel requests"), v5.4, - reword commit description. (cherry picked from commit 506006055769b10d1b2b4e22f636f3b45e0e9fc7)

Published: 2025-05-02 Last update: 2025-11-12 Assigner: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67 Source: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67

Conclusion & alert: CVE-2023-53087 is rated Low Risk (28.9/100): CVSS Medium severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.06%). 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.

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2023-53087

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 2026-02-26 0.02% 0.06% +0.04%
2 2025-05-03 0.02%

Full EPSS history (2 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2023-53087

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

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]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2023-53087

OS Trackers for CVE-2023-53087

vendor priority summary link
debian not yet assigned CVE-2023-53087 not yet assigned 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-2023-53087
redhat medium https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2023-53087
suse medium https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2023-53087/
ubuntu medium CVE-2023-53087 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 139, released 120, needs-triage 1. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2023-53087

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2023-53087

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
linux linux_kernel >= 5.5, < 5.10.176 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 5.11, < 5.15.104 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 5.16, < 6.1.21 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 6.2, < 6.2.8 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 6.3 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.3:rc1:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 6.3 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.3:rc2:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2023-53087

cvelogic Threat Intelligence