linux-cve-announce - CVE-2023-53532: wifi: ath11k: fix deinitialization of firmware resources

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Message-ID: <2025100137-CVE-2023-53532-1627@gregkh>
Date: Wed,  1 Oct 2025 13:46:24 +0200
From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
To: linux-cve-announce@...r.kernel.org
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...nel.org>
Subject: CVE-2023-53532: wifi: ath11k: fix deinitialization of firmware resources

From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...nel.org>

Description
===========

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

wifi: ath11k: fix deinitialization of firmware resources

Currently, in ath11k_ahb_fw_resources_init(), iommu domain
mapping is done only for the chipsets having fixed firmware
memory. Also, for such chipsets, mapping is done only if it
does not have TrustZone support.

During deinitialization, only if TrustZone support is not there,
iommu is unmapped back. However, for non fixed firmware memory
chipsets, TrustZone support is not there and this makes the
condition check to true and it tries to unmap the memory which
was not mapped during initialization.

This leads to the following trace -

[   83.198790] Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 0000000000000008
[   83.259537] Modules linked in: ath11k_ahb ath11k qmi_helpers
.. snip ..
[   83.280286] pstate: 20000005 (nzCv daif -PAN -UAO -TCO -DIT -SSBS BTYPE=--)
[   83.287228] pc : __iommu_unmap+0x30/0x140
[   83.293907] lr : iommu_unmap+0x5c/0xa4
[   83.298072] sp : ffff80000b3abad0
.. snip ..
[   83.369175] Call trace:
[   83.376282]  __iommu_unmap+0x30/0x140
[   83.378541]  iommu_unmap+0x5c/0xa4
[   83.382360]  ath11k_ahb_fw_resource_deinit.part.12+0x2c/0xac [ath11k_ahb]
[   83.385666]  ath11k_ahb_free_resources+0x140/0x17c [ath11k_ahb]
[   83.392521]  ath11k_ahb_shutdown+0x34/0x40 [ath11k_ahb]
[   83.398248]  platform_shutdown+0x20/0x2c
[   83.403455]  device_shutdown+0x16c/0x1c4
[   83.407621]  kernel_restart_prepare+0x34/0x3c
[   83.411529]  kernel_restart+0x14/0x74
[   83.415781]  __do_sys_reboot+0x1c4/0x22c
[   83.419427]  __arm64_sys_reboot+0x1c/0x24
[   83.423420]  invoke_syscall+0x44/0xfc
[   83.427326]  el0_svc_common.constprop.3+0xac/0xe8
[   83.430974]  do_el0_svc+0xa0/0xa8
[   83.435659]  el0_svc+0x1c/0x44
[   83.438957]  el0t_64_sync_handler+0x60/0x144
[   83.441910]  el0t_64_sync+0x15c/0x160
[   83.446343] Code: aa0103f4 f9400001 f90027a1 d2800001 (f94006a0)
[   83.449903] ---[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]---

This can be reproduced by probing an AHB chipset which is not
having a fixed memory region. During reboot (or rmmod) trace
can be seen.

Fix this issue by adding a condition check on firmware fixed memory
hw_param as done in the counter initialization function.

Tested-on: IPQ8074 hw2.0 AHB WLAN.HK.2.7.0.1-01744-QCAHKSWPL_SILICONZ-1

The Linux kernel CVE team has assigned CVE-2023-53532 to this issue.


Affected and fixed versions
===========================

	Issue introduced in 5.19 with commit f9eec4947add999e1251bf14365a48a655b786a4 and fixed in 6.1.28 with commit 0324300dce3412d4737b4ec5898d0188495a7caa
	Issue introduced in 5.19 with commit f9eec4947add999e1251bf14365a48a655b786a4 and fixed in 6.2.15 with commit 8faf862d81ab197757761e87d0a99fbb96ab2cf0
	Issue introduced in 5.19 with commit f9eec4947add999e1251bf14365a48a655b786a4 and fixed in 6.3.2 with commit a1548363582a8066edd4986f839d785f13dda3aa
	Issue introduced in 5.19 with commit f9eec4947add999e1251bf14365a48a655b786a4 and fixed in 6.4 with commit 5a78ac33e3cb8822da64dd1af196e83664b332b0

Please see https://www.kernel.org for a full list of currently supported
kernel versions by the kernel community.

Unaffected versions might change over time as fixes are backported to
older supported kernel versions.  The official CVE entry at
	https://cve.org/CVERecord/?id=CVE-2023-53532
will be updated if fixes are backported, please check that for the most
up to date information about this issue.


Affected files
==============

The file(s) affected by this issue are:
	drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath11k/ahb.c


Mitigation
==========

The Linux kernel CVE team recommends that you update to the latest
stable kernel version for this, and many other bugfixes.  Individual
changes are never tested alone, but rather are part of a larger kernel
release.  Cherry-picking individual commits is not recommended or
supported by the Linux kernel community at all.  If however, updating to
the latest release is impossible, the individual changes to resolve this
issue can be found at these commits:
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/0324300dce3412d4737b4ec5898d0188495a7caa
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/8faf862d81ab197757761e87d0a99fbb96ab2cf0
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a1548363582a8066edd4986f839d785f13dda3aa
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/5a78ac33e3cb8822da64dd1af196e83664b332b0