Linux Kernel up to 6.1.17/6.2.4 mlx5e_skb_fifo_has_room memory leak

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability classified as critical was found in Linux Kernel up to 6.1.17/6.2.4. This affects the function mlx5e_skb_fifo_has_room. The manipulation results in memory leak. This vulnerability is known as CVE-2023-54238. No exploit is available. Upgrading the affected component is advised.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability classified as critical has been found in Linux Kernel up to 6.1.17/6.2.4. Affected is the function mlx5e_skb_fifo_has_room. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a memory leak vulnerability. CWE is classifying the issue as CWE-401. The product does not sufficiently track and release allocated memory after it has been used, which slowly consumes remaining memory. This is going to have an impact on availability. CVE summarizes:

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mlx5: fix skb leak while fifo resync and push During ptp resync operation SKBs were poped from the fifo but were never freed neither by napi_consume nor by dev_kfree_skb_any. Add call to napi_consume_skb to properly free SKBs. Another leak was happening because mlx5e_skb_fifo_has_room() had an error in the check. Comparing free running counters works well unless C promotes the types to something wider than the counter. In this case counters are u16 but the result of the substraction is promouted to int and it causes wrong result (negative value) of the check when producer have already overlapped but consumer haven't yet. Explicit cast to u16 fixes the issue.

The advisory is shared for download at git.kernel.org. This vulnerability is traded as CVE-2023-54238 since 12/30/2025. There are known technical details, but no exploit is available.

The vulnerability scanner Nessus provides a plugin with the ID 281472 (Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2023-54238), which helps to determine the existence of the flaw in a target environment.

Upgrading to version 6.1.18 or 6.2.5 eliminates this vulnerability. Applying the patch 234cffda95e1049f58e8ec136ef105c633f0ed19/68504c66d08c70fb92799722e25a932d311d74fd/e435941b1da1a0be4ff8a7ae425774c76a5ac514 is able to eliminate this problem. The bugfix is ready for download at git.kernel.org. The best possible mitigation is suggested to be upgrading to the latest version.

The vulnerability is also documented in the databases at Tenable (281472) and CERT Bund (WID-SEC-2025-2941). Once again VulDB remains the best source for vulnerability data.

Affected

• Debian Linux
• Amazon Linux 2
• IBM Power Hardware Management Console
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux
• Ubuntu Linux
• SUSE Linux
• Oracle Linux
• Open Source Linux Kernel
• RESF Rocky Linux
• IBM DataPower Gateway

Productinfo

Type

• Operating System

Vendor

• Linux

Name

• Kernel

Version

• 6.1.0
• 6.1.1
• 6.1.2
• 6.1.3
• 6.1.4
• 6.1.5
• 6.1.6
• 6.1.7
• 6.1.8
• 6.1.9
• 6.1.10
• 6.1.11
• 6.1.12
• 6.1.13
• 6.1.14
• 6.1.15
• 6.1.16
• 6.1.17
• 6.2.0
• 6.2.1
• 6.2.2
• 6.2.3
• 6.2.4

License

• open-source

Website

• Vendor: https://www.kernel.org/

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