CVE-2023-53538

MEDIUMNVD 5.55.5—
EchelonGraph scoreMEDIUM confidence

Score 5.5 from GitHub Security Advisory published 2025-10-04. NVD baseline CVSS 5.5; sources differ by 0.0.

Triggered by: GitHub Security Advisory CVSS
Sources: epss, ghsa, nvd
Trending — 3 sources updated this week
5.5EG
EchelonGraph verdictMonitorLow exploitation likelihood right now — keep watching.
  • Lower severity and no public exploit yet
CISA-KEV: Not listedEPSS PROB: 0%CVSS: 5.5Exploit: None knownExposed: 0

No vendor fix yet — apply a workaround or compensating control (WAF / firewall / segmentation) and watch for a patch.

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

btrfs: insert tree mod log move in push_node_left

There is a fairly unlikely race condition in tree mod log rewind that can result in a kernel panic which has the following trace:

[530.569] BTRFS critical (device sda3): unable to find logical 0 length 4096 [530.585] BTRFS critical (device sda3): unable to find logical 0 length 4096 [530.602] BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000002 [530.618] #PF: supervisor read access in kernel mode [530.629] #PF: error_code(0x0000) - not-present page [530.641] PGD 0 P4D 0 [530.647] Oops: 0000 [#1] SMP [530.654] CPU: 30 PID: 398973 Comm: below Kdump: loaded Tainted: G S O K 5.12.0-0_fbk13_clang_7455_gb24de3bdb045 #1 [530.680] Hardware name: Quanta Mono Lake-M.2 SATA 1HY9U9Z001G/Mono Lake-M.2 SATA, BIOS F20_3A15 08/16/2017 [530.703] RIP: 0010:__btrfs_map_block+0xaa/0xd00 [530.755] RSP: 0018:ffffc9002c2f7600 EFLAGS: 00010246 [530.767] RAX: ffffffffffffffea RBX: ffff888292e41000 RCX: f2702d8b8be15100 [530.784] RDX: ffff88885fda6fb8 RSI: ffff88885fd973c8 RDI: ffff88885fd973c8 [530.800] RBP: ffff888292e410d0 R08: ffffffff82fd7fd0 R09: 00000000fffeffff [530.816] R10: ffffffff82e57fd0 R11: ffffffff82e57d70 R12: 0000000000000000 [530.832] R13: 0000000000001000 R14: 0000000000001000 R15: ffffc9002c2f76f0 [530.848] FS: 00007f38d64af000(0000) GS:ffff88885fd80000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 [530.866] CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 [530.880] CR2: 0000000000000002 CR3: 00000002b6770004 CR4: 00000000003706e0 [530.896] DR0: 0000000000000000 DR1: 0000000000000000 DR2: 0000000000000000 [530.912] DR3: 0000000000000000 DR6: 00000000fffe0ff0 DR7: 0000000000000400 [530.928] Call Trace: [530.934] ? btrfs_printk+0x13b/0x18c [530.943] ? btrfs_bio_counter_inc_blocked+0x3d/0x130 [530.955] btrfs_map_bio+0x75/0x330 [530.963] ? kmem_cache_alloc+0x12a/0x2d0 [530.973] ? btrfs_submit_metadata_bio+0x63/0x100 [530.984] btrfs_submit_metadata_bio+0xa4/0x100 [530.995] submit_extent_page+0x30f/0x360 [531.004] read_extent_buffer_pages+0x49e/0x6d0 [531.015] ? submit_extent_page+0x360/0x360 [531.025] btree_read_extent_buffer_pages+0x5f/0x150 [531.037] read_tree_block+0x37/0x60 [531.046] read_block_for_search+0x18b/0x410 [531.056] btrfs_search_old_slot+0x198/0x2f0 [531.066] resolve_indirect_ref+0xfe/0x6f0 [531.076] ? ulist_alloc+0x31/0x60 [531.084] ? kmem_cache_alloc_trace+0x12e/0x2b0 [531.095] find_parent_nodes+0x720/0x1830 [531.105] ? ulist_alloc+0x10/0x60 [531.113] iterate_extent_inodes+0xea/0x370 [531.123] ? btrfs_previous_extent_item+0x8f/0x110 [531.134] ? btrfs_search_path_in_tree+0x240/0x240 [531.146] iterate_inodes_from_logical+0x98/0xd0 [531.157] ? btrfs_search_path_in_tree+0x240/0x240 [531.168] btrfs_ioctl_logical_to_ino+0xd9/0x180 [531.179] btrfs_ioctl+0xe2/0x2eb0

This occurs when logical inode resolution takes a tree mod log sequence number, and then while backref walking hits a rewind on a busy node which has the following sequence of tree mod log operations (numbers filled in from a specific example, but they are somewhat arbitrary)

REMOVE_WHILE_FREEING slot 532 REMOVE_WHILE_FREEING slot 531 REMOVE_WHILE_FREEING slot 530 ... REMOVE_WHILE_FREEING slot 0 REMOVE slot 455 REMOVE slot 454 REMOVE slot 453 ... REMOVE slot 0 ADD slot 455 ADD slot 454 ADD slot 453 ... ADD slot 0 MOVE src slot 0 -> dst slot 456 nritems 533 REMOVE slot 455 REMOVE slot 454 REMOVE slot 453 ... REMOVE slot 0

When this sequence gets applied via btrfs_tree_mod_log_rewind, it allocates a fresh rewind eb, and first inserts the correct key info for the 533 elements, then overwrites the first 456 of them, then decrements the count by 456 via the add ops, then rewinds the move by doing a memmove from 456:988->0:532. We have never written anything past 532, ---truncated---

CVSS v3
5.5
EG Score
5.5(medium)
EG Risk
29(Track)
EG Risk 29/100SSVC: Track

EG Risk is EchelonGraph's 0–100 priority score: it fuses intrinsic severity with real-world exploitation and automatability so you can rank equal-severity CVEs and fix the most dangerous first. Higher = act sooner. Distinct from the 0–10 EG Score (severity).

How it’s computed
Severity55% × 45%
Exploitation0% × 40%
Automatability30% × 15%
Action: Routine — remediate on your standard cadence.
EPSS PROB
0%
EPSS %ILE
3%
KEV
Not listed

Published

October 4, 2025

Last Modified

March 25, 2026

References (2)

Patch Availability(1)

Vendor / EcosystemFixed in / PatchReleasedSource
linuxKernel @ 6.4.4—osv

Patches are aggregated from vendor advisories (Red Hat, Microsoft, Cisco, GitHub) and package ecosystems (OSV, GHSA). Multiple rows for the same upstream release have been deduplicated.

Weakness Classification(1)

MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration — the root-cause categories this CVE belongs to.

Data Freshness Timeline

(refreshed 10× in last 7d / 40× in last 30d)

Each row is a source pipeline that fetched or updated this CVE on that date, with what changed. For example, "NVD update" means NVD published or revised its analysis for this CVE; "MITRE cvelistV5" means we ingested or refreshed it from the CNA feed. Most recent first.

  1. 2026-07-28 15:34 UTCEPSS rescore
  2. 2026-07-28 15:34 UTCEPSS rescore
  3. 2026-07-25 14:16 UTCEPSS rescore
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  5. 2026-07-23 18:11 UTCOSV refresh
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  7. 2026-07-23 02:29 UTCEG score recompute
  8. 2026-07-22 23:16 UTCEG score recompute
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  1. 2026-07-11 08:26 UTCEPSS rescore
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  6. 2026-07-06 16:26 UTCEPSS rescore
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  8. 2026-07-06 13:00 UTCOSV refresh
  9. 2026-07-06 02:22 UTCEPSS rescore
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  20. 2026-06-25 13:48 UTCEPSS rescore
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  35. 2026-06-18 01:05 UTCOSV refresh
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  45. 2026-06-10 22:17 UTCEPSS rescore
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  49. 2026-06-07 15:24 UTCEPSS rescore
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  66. 2026-05-29 21:29 UTCEG score recompute
  67. 2026-05-29 21:29 UTCGHSA enrichment
  68. 2026-05-29 13:43 UTCEPSS rescore

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Frequently asked(5)

What is CVE-2023-53538?
CVE-2023-53538 is a medium vulnerability published on October 4, 2025. In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: btrfs: insert tree mod log move in pushnodeleft There is a fairly unlikely race condition in tree mod log rewind that can result in a kernel panic which has the following trace: [530.569] BTRFS critical (device sda3): unable to…
When was CVE-2023-53538 disclosed?
CVE-2023-53538 was first published in the National Vulnerability Database on October 4, 2025, with the most recent update on March 25, 2026. EchelonGraph re-ingests CVE updates from NVD on a 2-hour cycle, so this page reflects the latest published state.
Is CVE-2023-53538 actively exploited?
CVE-2023-53538 is not currently on CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. FIRST EPSS estimates a 0% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, which ranks it in the top 97.2% of all scored CVEs.
What is the CVSS score of CVE-2023-53538?
CVE-2023-53538 has a CVSS v3 base score of 5.5 (NVD).
How do I remediate CVE-2023-53538?
Patch to the fixed version published by the affected vendor. Where vendor advisories exist for CVE-2023-53538, EchelonGraph cross-links them in the Vendor Advisories panel below — those typically contain the canonical remediation steps, fixed version numbers, and any vendor-specific mitigations.

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