linux-cve-announce - CVE-2023-53856: of: overlay: Call of_changeset

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Message-ID: <2025120903-CVE-2023-53856-ed42@gregkh>
Date: Tue,  9 Dec 2025 10:31:40 +0900
From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
To: linux-cve-announce@...r.kernel.org
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...nel.org>
Subject: CVE-2023-53856: of: overlay: Call of_changeset_init() early

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

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

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

of: overlay: Call of_changeset_init() early

When of_overlay_fdt_apply() fails, the changeset may be partially
applied, and the caller is still expected to call of_overlay_remove() to
clean up this partial state.

However, of_overlay_apply() calls of_resolve_phandles() before
init_overlay_changeset().  Hence if the overlay fails to apply due to an
unresolved symbol, the overlay_changeset.cset.entries list is still
uninitialized, and cleanup will crash with a NULL-pointer dereference in
overlay_removal_is_ok().

Fix this by moving the call to of_changeset_init() from
init_overlay_changeset() to of_overlay_fdt_apply(), where all other
early initialization is done.

The Linux kernel CVE team has assigned CVE-2023-53856 to this issue.


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

	Issue introduced in 4.15 with commit f948d6d8b792bb90041edc12eac35faf83030994 and fixed in 5.15.132 with commit 01bb96ad38089f5cc6de7746dac13437d35eb1dc
	Issue introduced in 4.15 with commit f948d6d8b792bb90041edc12eac35faf83030994 and fixed in 6.1.53 with commit 3fb210cd521c9efcb211e9f5ce40fc907200bf13
	Issue introduced in 4.15 with commit f948d6d8b792bb90041edc12eac35faf83030994 and fixed in 6.4.16 with commit be86241bf5d1efd16d8a7231c13b33459c5d755d
	Issue introduced in 4.15 with commit f948d6d8b792bb90041edc12eac35faf83030994 and fixed in 6.5.3 with commit c403c81b577a67fe9ec6a2e89d143256487be50f
	Issue introduced in 4.15 with commit f948d6d8b792bb90041edc12eac35faf83030994 and fixed in 6.6 with commit a9515ff4fb142b690a0d2b58782b15903b990dba

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-2023-53856
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/of/overlay.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/01bb96ad38089f5cc6de7746dac13437d35eb1dc
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3fb210cd521c9efcb211e9f5ce40fc907200bf13
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/be86241bf5d1efd16d8a7231c13b33459c5d755d
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c403c81b577a67fe9ec6a2e89d143256487be50f
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a9515ff4fb142b690a0d2b58782b15903b990dba