In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: openvswitch: reject negative ifindex Recent changes in net-next (commit 759ab1edb56c ("net: store netdevs in an xarray")) refactored the handling of pre-assigned ifindexes and let syzbot surface a latent problem in ovs. ovs does not validate ifindex, making it possible to create netdev ports with negative ifindex values. It's easy to repro with YNL: $ ./cli.py --spec netlink/specs/ovs_datapath.yaml \ --do new \ --json '{"upcall-pid": 1, "name":"my-dp"}' $ ./cli.py --spec netlink/specs/ovs_vport.yaml \ --do new \ --json '{"upcall-pid": "00000001", "name": "some-port0", "dp-ifindex":3,"ifindex":4294901760,"type":2}' $ ip link show -65536: some-port0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000 link/ether 7a:48:21:ad:0b:fb brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff ... Validate the inputs. Now the second command correctly returns: $ ./cli.py --spec netlink/specs/ovs_vport.yaml \ --do new \ --json '{"upcall-pid": "00000001", "name": "some-port0", "dp-ifindex":3,"ifindex":4294901760,"type":2}' lib.ynl.NlError: Netlink error: Numerical result out of range nl_len = 108 (92) nl_flags = 0x300 nl_type = 2 error: -34 extack: {'msg': 'integer out of range', 'unknown': [[type:4 len:36] b'\x0c\x00\x02\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x0c\x00\x03\x00\xff\xff\xff\x7f\x00\x00\x00\x00\x08\x00\x01\x00\x08\x00\x00\x00'], 'bad-attr': '.ifindex'} Accept 0 since it used to be silently ignored.
Conclusion & alert: CVE-2023-53843 is rated Low Risk (10.5/100): low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.20%). Mandatory action: Low composite risk—no urgent action required; patch on your normal maintenance cycle and revisit priority if CVSS or EPSS increases.
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 | 2026-06-15 | 0.02% | 0.20% | +0.19% |
| 2 | 2025-12-09 | — | 0.02% | — |
Full EPSS history (2 records total)
CVSS metrics for this CVE.
No CVSS data in dataset for this CVE.
| vendor | priority | summary | link |
|---|---|---|---|
debian
|
unimportant | CVE-2023-53843 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-2023-53843 |
redhat
|
medium | — | https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2023-53843 |
suse
|
medium | CVE-2023-53843 severity moderate: SUSE including 418 source package names (2.1.3-6.115:kernel-default-base-6.4.0-39.1.21.16, 2.1.3-7.146:kernel-rt-6.4.0-40.1, …), 877 product×package rows across 163 product lines (Container suse/sl-micro/6.0/base-os-container, Container suse/sl-micro/6.0/kvm-os-container, … (163 product lines)): Fixed 434, Known Affected 231, Known Not Affected 212. | https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2023-53843/ |
ubuntu
|
medium | CVE-2023-53843 medium priority: Ubuntu including 157 source packages (linux, linux-allwinner-5.19, …), 1405 status rows across 9 suites (bionic, focal, jammy, noble, plucky, questing, trusty, upstream, xenial): DNE 1010, ignored 172, not-affected 139, released 84. | https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2023-53843 |
| Vendor | Product | Version | Raw CPE |
|---|---|---|---|
| No affected products in dataset. | |||