# CVE-2023-52517: spi: sun6i: fix race between DMA RX transfer completion and RX FIFO drain

- Severity: CVSS 7.8 (High), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=no, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2024-03-02 · Updated: 2026-08-05

## Affected

- Linux: version range not reported
- Linux: 5.11

## Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: spi: sun6i: fix race between DMA RX transfer completion and RX FIFO drain Previously the transfer complete IRQ immediately drained to RX FIFO to read any data remaining in FIFO to the RX buffer. This behaviour is correct when dealing with SPI in interrupt mode. However in DMA mode the transfer complete interrupt still fires as soon as all bytes to be transferred have been stored in the FIFO. At that point data in the FIFO still needs to be picked up by the DMA engine. Thus the drain procedure and DMA engine end up racing to read from RX FIFO, corrupting any data read. Additionally the RX buffer pointer is never adjusted according to DMA progress in DMA mode, thus calling the RX FIFO drain procedure in DMA mode is a bug. Fix corruptions in DMA RX mode by draining RX FIFO only in interrupt mode. Also wait for completion of RX DMA when in DMA mode before returning to ensure all data has been copied to the supplied memory buffer.

## 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.
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  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2023-52517

## 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/bd1ec7f9983b5cd3c77e0f7cda3fa8aed041af2f
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/36b29974a7ad2ff604c24ad348f940506c7b1209
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/4e149d524678431638ff378ef6025e4e89b71097
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/1f11f4202caf5710204d334fe63392052783876d

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2023-52517
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2023-52517
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