Improper Update of Reference Count Affecting perf package, versions <0:6.1.49-69.116.amzn2023


Severity

Recommended
high

Based on Amazon Linux security rating.

Threat Intelligence

EPSS
0.02% (5th percentile)

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  • Snyk IDSNYK-AMZN2023-PERF-13842999
  • published6 Nov 2025
  • disclosed22 Oct 2025

Introduced: 22 Oct 2025

NewCVE-2023-53698  (opens in a new tab)
CWE-911  (opens in a new tab)

How to fix?

Upgrade Amazon-Linux:2023 perf to version 0:6.1.49-69.116.amzn2023 or higher.
This issue was patched in ALAS2023-2023-330.

NVD Description

Note: Versions mentioned in the description apply only to the upstream perf package and not the perf package as distributed by Amazon-Linux. See How to fix? for Amazon-Linux:2023 relevant fixed versions and status.

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

xsk: fix refcount underflow in error path

Fix a refcount underflow problem reported by syzbot that can happen when a system is running out of memory. If xp_alloc_tx_descs() fails, and it can only fail due to not having enough memory, then the error path is triggered. In this error path, the refcount of the pool is decremented as it has incremented before. However, the reference to the pool in the socket was not nulled. This means that when the socket is closed later, the socket teardown logic will think that there is a pool attached to the socket and try to decrease the refcount again, leading to a refcount underflow.

I chose this fix as it involved adding just a single line. Another option would have been to move xp_get_pool() and the assignment of xs->pool to after the if-statement and using xs_umem->pool instead of xs->pool in the whole if-statement resulting in somewhat simpler code, but this would have led to much more churn in the code base perhaps making it harder to backport.

CVSS Base Scores

version 3.1