CVE-2023-53256

published 2025-09-15

CVE-2023-53256: In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: firmware: arm_ffa: Fix FFA device names for logical partitions Each physical partition can…

Priority P4 23 medium 5.5 CVSS 3.1

AV L AC L PR L UI N S U C H I N A N

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

firmware: arm_ffa: Fix FFA device names for logical partitions

Each physical partition can provide multiple services each with UUID.
Each such service can be presented as logical partition with a unique
combination of VM ID and UUID. The number of distinct UUID in a system
will be less than or equal to the number of logical partitions.

However, currently it fails to register more than one logical partition
or service within a physical partition as the device name contains only
VM ID while both VM ID and UUID are maintained in the partition information.
The kernel complains with the below message:

| sysfs: cannot create duplicate filename '/devices/arm-ffa-8001'
| CPU: 1 PID: 1 Comm: swapper/0 Not tainted 6.3.0-rc7 #8
| Hardware name: FVP Base RevC (DT)
| Call trace:
| dump_backtrace+0xf8/0x118
| show_stack+0x18/0x24
| dump_stack_lvl+0x50/0x68
| dump_stack+0x18/0x24
| sysfs_create_dir_ns+0xe0/0x13c
| kobject_add_internal+0x220/0x3d4
| kobject_add+0x94/0x100
| device_add+0x144/0x5d8
| device_register+0x20/0x30
| ffa_device_register+0x88/0xd8
| ffa_setup_partitions+0x108/0x1b8
| ffa_init+0x2ec/0x3a4
| do_one_initcall+0xcc/0x240
| do_initcall_level+0x8c/0xac
| do_initcalls+0x54/0x94
| do_basic_setup+0x1c/0x28
| kernel_init_freeable+0x100/0x16c
| kernel_init+0x20/0x1a0
| ret_from_fork+0x10/0x20
| kobject_add_internal failed for arm-ffa-8001 with -EEXIST, don't try to
| register things with the same name in the same directory.
| arm_ffa arm-ffa: unable to register device arm-ffa-8001 err=-17
| ARM FF-A: ffa_setup_partitions: failed to register partition ID 0x8001

By virtue of being random enough to avoid collisions when generated in a
distributed system, there is no way to compress UUID keys to the number
of bits required to identify each. We can eliminate '-' in the name but
it is not worth eliminating 4 bytes and add unnecessary logic for doing
that. Also v1.0 doesn't provide the UUID of the partit

Affected

13 ranges

Vendor	Product	Version range	Fixed in
debian	linux	< linux 6.1.37-1 (bookworm)	linux 6.1.37-1 (bookworm)
linux	linux	—	—
linux	linux	>= e781858488b918e30a6ff28e9eab6058b787e3b3 < c2f65991097a62efbdb2bed3c06fc86b08c9593b	c2f65991097a62efbdb2bed3c06fc86b08c9593b
linux	linux	>= e781858488b918e30a6ff28e9eab6058b787e3b3 < dfc5aaa57f52a5800c339369d235fa30fb734feb	dfc5aaa57f52a5800c339369d235fa30fb734feb
linux	linux	>= e781858488b918e30a6ff28e9eab6058b787e3b3 < 93d0cbe88118fcef234d3ebcbdadcb9ebe9d34f1	93d0cbe88118fcef234d3ebcbdadcb9ebe9d34f1
linux	linux	>= e781858488b918e30a6ff28e9eab6058b787e3b3 < 19b8766459c41c6f318f8a548cc1c66dffd18363	19b8766459c41c6f318f8a548cc1c66dffd18363
linux	linux_kernel	—	—
linux	linux_kernel	>= 0 < 6.1.37-1	6.1.37-1
linux	linux_kernel	>= 0 < 6.3.7-1	6.3.7-1
linux	linux_kernel	>= 0 < 6.3.7-1	6.3.7-1
linux	linux_kernel	>= 5.14 < 5.15.114	5.15.114
linux	linux_kernel	>= 5.16 < 6.1.31	6.1.31
linux	linux_kernel	>= 6.2 < 6.3.5	6.3.5

CVSS provenance

nvd v3.1 5.5 MEDIUM CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

osv 5.5 MEDIUM

vendor_debian 5.5 MEDIUM

vendor_redhat 5.5 MEDIUM

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