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CVE-2023-54170

Our Analysis: General-Purpose

Our model has classified this vulnerability as relevant to General-Purpose Systems, helping your team prioritize efforts effectively.

Published Date December 30, 2025
Last Modified December 31, 2025
CVSS Vector Not Available

Description

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

keys: Fix linking a duplicate key to a keyring's assoc_array

When making a DNS query inside the kernel using dns_query(), the request
code can in rare cases end up creating a duplicate index key in the
assoc_array of the destination keyring. It is eventually found by
a BUG_ON() check in the assoc_array implementation and results in
a crash.

Example report:
[2158499.700025] kernel BUG at ../lib/assoc_array.c:652!
[2158499.700039] invalid opcode: 0000 [#1] SMP PTI
[2158499.700065] CPU: 3 PID: 31985 Comm: kworker/3:1 Kdump: loaded Not tainted 5.3.18-150300.59.90-default #1 SLE15-SP3
[2158499.700096] Hardware name: VMware, Inc. VMware Virtual Platform/440BX Desktop Reference Platform, BIOS 6.00 11/12/2020
[2158499.700351] Workqueue: cifsiod cifs_resolve_server [cifs]
[2158499.700380] RIP: 0010:assoc_array_insert+0x85f/0xa40
[2158499.700401] Code: ff 74 2b 48 8b 3b 49 8b 45 18 4c 89 e6 48 83 e7 fe e8 95 ec 74 00 3b 45 88 7d db 85 c0 79 d4 0f 0b 0f 0b 0f 0b e8 41 f2 be ff <0f> 0b 0f 0b 81 7d 88 ff ff ff 7f 4c 89 eb 4c 8b ad 58 ff ff ff 0f
[2158499.700448] RSP: 0018:ffffc0bd6187faf0 EFLAGS: 00010282
[2158499.700470] RAX: ffff9f1ea7da2fe8 RBX: ffff9f1ea7da2fc1 RCX: 0000000000000005
[2158499.700492] RDX: 0000000000000000 RSI: 0000000000000005 RDI: 0000000000000000
[2158499.700515] RBP: ffffc0bd6187fbb0 R08: ffff9f185faf1100 R09: 0000000000000000
[2158499.700538] R10: ffff9f1ea7da2cc0 R11: 000000005ed8cec8 R12: ffffc0bd6187fc28
[2158499.700561] R13: ffff9f15feb8d000 R14: ffff9f1ea7da2fc0 R15: ffff9f168dc0d740
[2158499.700585] FS: 0000000000000000(0000) GS:ffff9f185fac0000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000
[2158499.700610] CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033
[2158499.700630] CR2: 00007fdd94fca238 CR3: 0000000809d8c006 CR4: 00000000003706e0
[2158499.700702] Call Trace:
[2158499.700741] ? key_alloc+0x447/0x4b0
[2158499.700768] ? __key_link_begin+0x43/0xa0
[2158499.700790] __key_link_begin+0x43/0xa0
[2158499.700814] request_key_and_link+0x2c7/0x730
[2158499.700847] ? dns_resolver_read+0x20/0x20 [dns_resolver]
[2158499.700873] ? key_default_cmp+0x20/0x20
[2158499.700898] request_key_tag+0x43/0xa0
[2158499.700926] dns_query+0x114/0x2ca [dns_resolver]
[2158499.701127] dns_resolve_server_name_to_ip+0x194/0x310 [cifs]
[2158499.701164] ? scnprintf+0x49/0x90
[2158499.701190] ? __switch_to_asm+0x40/0x70
[2158499.701211] ? __switch_to_asm+0x34/0x70
[2158499.701405] reconn_set_ipaddr_from_hostname+0x81/0x2a0 [cifs]
[2158499.701603] cifs_resolve_server+0x4b/0xd0 [cifs]
[2158499.701632] process_one_work+0x1f8/0x3e0
[2158499.701658] worker_thread+0x2d/0x3f0
[2158499.701682] ? process_one_work+0x3e0/0x3e0
[2158499.701703] kthread+0x10d/0x130
[2158499.701723] ? kthread_park+0xb0/0xb0
[2158499.701746] ret_from_fork+0x1f/0x40

The situation occurs as follows:
* Some kernel facility invokes dns_query() to resolve a hostname, for
example, "abcdef". The function registers its global DNS resolver
cache as current->cred.thread_keyring and passes the query to
request_key_net() -> request_key_tag() -> request_key_and_link().
* Function request_key_and_link() creates a keyring_search_context
object. Its match_data.cmp method gets set via a call to
type->match_preparse() (resolves to dns_resolver_match_preparse()) to
dns_resolver_cmp().
* Function request_key_and_link() continues and invokes
search_process_keyrings_rcu() which returns that a given key was not
found. The control is then passed to request_key_and_link() ->
construct_alloc_key().
* Concurrently to that, a second task similarly makes a DNS query for
"abcdef." and its result gets inserted into the DNS resolver cache.
* Back on the first task, function construct_alloc_key() first runs
__key_link_begin() to determine an assoc_array_edit operation to
insert a new key. Index keys in the array are compared exactly as-is,
using keyring_compare_object(). The operation
---truncated---