CVE-2023-53843

Updated: 2026-01-10 00:57:09.923239

Description:

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: openvswitch: reject negative ifindex Recent changes in net-next (commit 759ab1edb56c ("net: store netdevs in an xarray")) refactored the handling of pre-assigned ifindexes and let syzbot surface a latent problem in ovs. ovs does not validate ifindex, making it possible to create netdev ports with negative ifindex values. It's easy to repro with YNL: $ ./cli.py --spec netlink/specs/ovs_datapath.yaml \ --do new \ --json '{"upcall-pid": 1, "name":"my-dp"}' $ ./cli.py --spec netlink/specs/ovs_vport.yaml \ --do new \ --json '{"upcall-pid": "00000001", "name": "some-port0", "dp-ifindex":3,"ifindex":4294901760,"type":2}' $ ip link show -65536: some-port0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000 link/ether 7a:48:21:ad:0b:fb brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff ... Validate the inputs. Now the second command correctly returns: $ ./cli.py --spec netlink/specs/ovs_vport.yaml \ --do new \ --json '{"upcall-pid": "00000001", "name": "some-port0", "dp-ifindex":3,"ifindex":4294901760,"type":2}' lib.ynl.NlError: Netlink error: Numerical result out of range nl_len = 108 (92) nl_flags = 0x300 nl_type = 2 error: -34extack: {'msg': 'integer out of range', 'unknown': [[type:4 len:36] b'\x0c\x00\x02\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x0c\x00\x03\x00\xff\xff\xff\x7f\x00\x00\x00\x00\x08\x00\x01\x00\x08\x00\x00\x00'], 'bad-attr': '.ifindex'} Accept 0 since it used to be silently ignored.


Links NIST CIRCL RHEL Ubuntu

Severity

Severity Score
CVSS Version 2.x NONE 0.0
CVSS Version 3.x MEDIUM 5.1

Status

OS name Project name Version Score Severity Status Errata Last updated

Statement

AlmaLinux 9.2 ESU kernel 5.14.0 5.1 MEDIUM Released CLSA-2026:1767864313 2026-01-08 16:46:41
CentOS 8.4 ELS kernel 4.18.0 5.1 MEDIUM Not Vulnerable 2026-01-06 09:35:09
CentOS 8.5 ELS kernel 4.18.0 5.1 MEDIUM Not Vulnerable 2026-01-06 09:35:09