NULL Pointer Dereference Affecting perf package, versions *


Severity

Recommended
0.0
medium
0
10

Based on CentOS security rating.

Threat Intelligence

EPSS
0.03% (8th percentile)

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  • Snyk IDSNYK-CENTOS8-PERF-14330167
  • published10 Dec 2025
  • disclosed9 Dec 2025

Introduced: 9 Dec 2025

CVE-2023-53856  (opens in a new tab)
CWE-476  (opens in a new tab)

How to fix?

There is no fixed version for Centos:8 perf.

NVD Description

Note: Versions mentioned in the description apply only to the upstream perf package and not the perf package as distributed by Centos. See How to fix? for Centos:8 relevant fixed versions and status.

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

of: overlay: Call of_changeset_init() early

When of_overlay_fdt_apply() fails, the changeset may be partially applied, and the caller is still expected to call of_overlay_remove() to clean up this partial state.

However, of_overlay_apply() calls of_resolve_phandles() before init_overlay_changeset(). Hence if the overlay fails to apply due to an unresolved symbol, the overlay_changeset.cset.entries list is still uninitialized, and cleanup will crash with a NULL-pointer dereference in overlay_removal_is_ok().

Fix this by moving the call to of_changeset_init() from init_overlay_changeset() to of_overlay_fdt_apply(), where all other early initialization is done.

CVSS Base Scores

version 3.1