Vulnerability Database

374,589

Total vulnerabilities in the database

CVE-2023-53597 — linux / linux_kernel

Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime

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

cifs: fix mid leak during reconnection after timeout threshold

When the number of responses with status of STATUS_IO_TIMEOUT exceeds a specified threshold (NUM_STATUS_IO_TIMEOUT), we reconnect the connection. But we do not return the mid, or the credits returned for the mid, or reduce the number of in-flight requests.

This bug could result in the server->in_flight count to go bad, and also cause a leak in the mids.

This change moves the check to a few lines below where the response is decrypted, even of the response is read from the transform header. This way, the code for returning the mids can be reused.

Also, the cifs_reconnect was reconnecting just the transport connection before. In case of multi-channel, this may not be what we want to do after several timeouts. Changed that to reconnect the session and the tree too.

Also renamed NUM_STATUS_IO_TIMEOUT to a more appropriate name MAX_STATUS_IO_TIMEOUT.

  • Published: Oct 4, 2025
  • Updated: Feb 7, 2026
  • CVE: CVE-2023-53597
  • Severity: Medium
  • Exploit:
  • CISA KEV:

CVSS v3:

  • Severity: High
  • Score: 7.5
  • AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

CWEs:

Frequently Asked Questions

A security vulnerability is a weakness in software, hardware, or configuration that can be exploited to compromise confidentiality, integrity, or availability. Many vulnerabilities are tracked as CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), which provide a standardized identifier so teams can coordinate patching, mitigation, and risk assessment across tools and vendors.

CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) estimates technical severity, but it doesn't automatically equal business risk. Prioritize using context like internet exposure, affected asset criticality, known exploitation (proof-of-concept or in-the-wild), and whether compensating controls exist. A "Medium" CVSS on an exposed, production system can be more urgent than a "Critical" on an isolated, non-production host.

A vulnerability is the underlying weakness. An exploit is the method or code used to take advantage of it. A zero-day is a vulnerability that is unknown to the vendor or has no publicly available fix when attackers begin using it. In practice, risk increases sharply when exploitation becomes reliable or widespread.

Recurring findings usually come from incomplete Asset Discovery, inconsistent patch management, inherited images, and configuration drift. In modern environments, you also need to watch the software supply chain: dependencies, containers, build pipelines, and third-party services can reintroduce the same weakness even after you patch a single host. Unknown or unmanaged assets (often called Shadow IT) are a common reason the same issues resurface.

Use a simple, repeatable triage model: focus first on externally exposed assets, high-value systems (identity, VPN, email, production), vulnerabilities with known exploits, and issues that enable remote code execution or privilege escalation. Then enforce patch SLAs and track progress using consistent metrics so remediation is steady, not reactive.

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