Description

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

efivarfs: force RO when remounting if SetVariable is not supported

If SetVariable at runtime is not supported by the firmware we never assign
a callback for that function. At the same time mount the efivarfs as
RO so no one can call that. However, we never check the permission flags
when someone remounts the filesystem as RW. As a result this leads to a
crash looking like this:

$ mount -o remount,rw /sys/firmware/efi/efivars
$ efi-updatevar -f PK.auth PK

[ 303.279166] Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 0000000000000000
[ 303.280482] Mem abort info:
[ 303.280854] ESR = 0x0000000086000004
[ 303.281338] EC = 0x21: IABT (current EL), IL = 32 bits
[ 303.282016] SET = 0, FnV = 0
[ 303.282414] EA = 0, S1PTW = 0
[ 303.282821] FSC = 0x04: level 0 translation fault
[ 303.283771] user pgtable: 4k pages, 48-bit VAs, pgdp=000000004258c000
[ 303.284913] [0000000000000000] pgd=0000000000000000, p4d=0000000000000000
[ 303.286076] Internal error: Oops: 0000000086000004 [#1] PREEMPT SMP
[ 303.286936] Modules linked in: qrtr tpm_tis tpm_tis_core crct10dif_ce arm_smccc_trng rng_core drm fuse ip_tables x_tables ipv6
[ 303.288586] CPU: 1 PID: 755 Comm: efi-updatevar Not tainted 6.3.0-rc1-00108-gc7d0c4695c68 #1
[ 303.289748] Hardware name: Unknown Unknown Product/Unknown Product, BIOS 2023.04-00627-g88336918701d 04/01/2023
[ 303.291150] pstate: 60400005 (nZCv daif +PA...

Classification

CVE ID: CVE-2023-52463

Affected Products

Vendor: Linux

Product: Linux

Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS)

EPSS Score: 0.04% (probability of being exploited)

EPSS Percentile: 5.08% (scored less or equal to compared to others)

EPSS Date: 2025-02-04 (when was this score calculated)

References

https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/94c742324ed7e42c5bd6a9ed22e4ec6d764db4d8
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/2aa141f8bc580f8f9811dfe4e0e6009812b73826
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/d4a9aa7db574a0da64307729cc031fb68597aa8b
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/0049fe7e4a85849bdd778cdb72e51a791ff3d737
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/d4a714873db0866cc471521114eeac4a5072d548
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/0e8d2444168dd519fea501599d150e62718ed2fe

Timeline