CVE-2023-53549

Status: AnalyzedMedium (5.5)—

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

netfilter: ipset: Rework long task execution when adding/deleting entries

When adding/deleting large number of elements in one step in ipset, it can take a reasonable amount of time and can result in soft lockup errors. The patch 5f7b51bf09ba ("netfilter: ipset: Limit the maximal range of consecutive elements to add/delete") tried to fix it by limiting the max elements to process at all. However it was not enough, it is still possible that we get hung tasks.

Read full descriptionShow less

Lowering the limit is not reasonable, so the approach in this patch is as follows: rely on the method used at resizing sets and save the state when we reach a smaller internal batch limit, unlock/lock and proceed from the saved state. Thus we can avoid long continuous tasks and at the same time removed the limit to add/delete large number of elements in one step.

The nfnl mutex is held during the whole operation which prevents one to issue other ipset commands in parallel.

CVSS

Version: 3.1
Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Base score: 5.5

Exploitation probability (EPSS)

Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days: 0.13%
Percentile among all scored CVEs: 2
Score date: 10/5/2026

EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System, FIRST) estimates how likely a vulnerability is to be exploited in the wild within 30 days. It complements CVSS (impact) and CISA KEV (confirmed exploitation).

Affected technologies (1)

Linux — Linux Kernel

CWEs

CWE-667

References

Raw JSON (NVD)

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