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Unrated severityNVD Advisory· Published Dec 9, 2025· Updated Apr 15, 2026

CVE-2023-53781

CVE-2023-53781

Description

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

smc: Fix use-after-free in tcp_write_timer_handler().

With Eric's ref tracker, syzbot finally found a repro for use-after-free in tcp_write_timer_handler() by kernel TCP sockets. [0]

If SMC creates a kernel socket in __smc_create(), the kernel socket is supposed to be freed in smc_clcsock_release() by calling sock_release() when we close() the parent SMC socket.

However, at the end of smc_clcsock_release(), the kernel socket's sk_state might not be TCP_CLOSE. This means that we have not called inet_csk_destroy_sock() in __tcp_close() and have not stopped the TCP timers.

The kernel socket's TCP timers can be fired later, so we need to hold a refcnt for net as we do for MPTCP subflows in mptcp_subflow_create_socket().

[0]: leaked reference. sk_alloc (./include/net/net_namespace.h:335 net/core/sock.c:2108) inet_create (net/ipv4/af_inet.c:319 net/ipv4/af_inet.c:244) __sock_create (net/socket.c:1546) smc_create (net/smc/af_smc.c:3269 net/smc/af_smc.c:3284) __sock_create (net/socket.c:1546) __sys_socket (net/socket.c:1634 net/socket.c:1618 net/socket.c:1661) __x64_sys_socket (net/socket.c:1672) do_syscall_64 (arch/x86/entry/common.c:50 arch/x86/entry/common.c:80) entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe (arch/x86/entry/entry_64.S:120) ================================================================== BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in tcp_write_timer_handler (net/ipv4/tcp_timer.c:378 net/ipv4/tcp_timer.c:624 net/ipv4/tcp_timer.c:594) Read of size 1 at addr ffff888052b65e0d by task syzrepro/18091

CPU: 0 PID: 18091 Comm: syzrepro Tainted: G W 6.3.0-rc4-01174-gb5d54eb5899a #7 Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS 1.16.0-1.amzn2022.0.1 04/01/2014 Call Trace:

dump_stack_lvl (lib/dump_stack.c:107) print_report (mm/kasan/report.c:320 mm/kasan/report.c:430) kasan_report (mm/kasan/report.c:538) tcp_write_timer_handler (net/ipv4/tcp_timer.c:378 net/ipv4/tcp_timer.c:624 net/ipv4/tcp_timer.c:594) tcp_write_timer (./include/linux/spinlock.h:390 net/ipv4/tcp_timer.c:643) call_timer_fn (./arch/x86/include/asm/jump_label.h:27 ./include/linux/jump_label.h:207 ./include/trace/events/timer.h:127 kernel/time/timer.c:1701) __run_timers.part.0 (kernel/time/timer.c:1752 kernel/time/timer.c:2022) run_timer_softirq (kernel/time/timer.c:2037) __do_softirq (./arch/x86/include/asm/jump_label.h:27 ./include/linux/jump_label.h:207 ./include/trace/events/irq.h:142 kernel/softirq.c:572) __irq_exit_rcu (kernel/softirq.c:445 kernel/softirq.c:650) irq_exit_rcu (kernel/softirq.c:664) sysvec_apic_timer_interrupt (arch/x86/kernel/apic/apic.c:1107 (discriminator 14))

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140

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CVE-2023-53781 · VYPR