Vulnerability · Published Sep 15, 2025 · Assigned by Linux

CVE-2023-53256firmware: arm_ffa: Fix FFA device names for logical partitions

Medium 5.5

In plain English

A medium-severity security flaw in Linux from Linux. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.1% (higher than 4% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.

Severity (CVSS 3.1)5.5Medium
Exploit odds (30 days)0.1%top 95.9% of all CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo reportsCISA SSVC: none
Attack toolingNoneno public tooling known

Official description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: firmware: arm_ffa: Fix FFA device names for logical partitions Each physical partition can provide multiple services each with UUID. Each such service can be presented as logical partition with a unique combination of VM ID and UUID. The number of distinct UUID in a system will be less than or equal to the number of logical partitions. However, currently it fails to register more than one logical partition or service within a physical partition as the device name contains only VM ID while both VM ID and UUID are maintained in the partition information. The kernel complains with the below message: | sysfs: cannot create duplicate filename '/devices/arm-ffa-8001' | CPU: 1 PID: 1 Comm: swapper/0 Not tainted 6.3.0-rc7 #8 | Hardware name: FVP Base RevC (DT) | Call trace: | dump_backtrace+0xf8/0x118 | show_stack+0x18/0x24 | dump_stack_lvl+0x50/0x68 | dump_stack+0x18/0x24 | sysfs_create_dir_ns+0xe0/0x13c | kobject_add_internal+0x220/0x3d4 | kobject_add+0x94/0x100 | device_add+0x144/0x5d8 | device_register+0x20/0x30 | ffa_device_register+0x88/0xd8 | ffa_setup_partitions+0x108/0x1b8 | ffa_init+0x2ec/0x3a4 | do_one_initcall+0xcc/0x240 | do_initcall_level+0x8c/0xac | do_initcalls+0x54/0x94 | do_basic_setup+0x1c/0x28 | kernel_init_freeable+0x100/0x16c | kernel_init+0x20/0x1a0 | ret_from_fork+0x10/0x20 | kobject_add_internal failed for arm-ffa-8001 with -EEXIST, don't try to | register things with the same name in the same directory. | arm_ffa arm-ffa: unable to register device arm-ffa-8001 err=-17 | ARM FF-A: ffa_setup_partitions: failed to register partition ID 0x8001 By virtue of being random enough to avoid collisions when generated in a distributed system, there is no way to compress UUID keys to the number of bits required to identify each. We can eliminate '-' in the name but it is not worth eliminating 4 bytes and add unnecessary logic for doing that. Also v1.0 doesn't provide the UUID of the partitions which makes it hard to use the same for the device name. So to keep it simple, let us alloc an ID using ida_alloc() and append the same to "arm-ffa" to make up a unique device name. Also stash the id value in ffa_dev to help freeing the ID later when the device is destroyed.

Affected packages & fixed versions

EcosystemPackageFixed inAdvisory
Debian:12linux6.1.37-1DEBIAN-CVE-2023-53256
Debian:13linux6.3.7-1DEBIAN-CVE-2023-53256
Debian:14linux6.3.7-1DEBIAN-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux5.15.0-83.92UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-allwinner-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-aws5.15.0-1044.49UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-aws-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-aws-6.2no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-aws-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-azure5.15.0-1046.53UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-azure-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-azure-6.11no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-azure-6.2no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-azure-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-azure-fde5.15.0-1046.53.1UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-azure-fde-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-azure-fde-6.2no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-gcp5.15.0-1041.49UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-gcp-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-gcp-6.11no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-gcp-6.2no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-gcp-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-gke5.15.0-1041.46UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-gkeop5.15.0-1027.32UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-hwe-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-hwe-6.11no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-hwe-6.2no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-hwe-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-ibm5.15.0-1037.40UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-intelno fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-intel-iot-realtimeno fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-intel-iotg5.15.0-1039.45UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-kvm5.15.0-1041.46UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-lowlatency5.15.0-83.92UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-lowlatency-hwe-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-lowlatency-hwe-6.11no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-lowlatency-hwe-6.2no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-lowlatency-hwe-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-nvidia5.15.0-1032.32UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-nvidia-6.2no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-nvidia-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-nvidia-tegra5.15.0-1017.17UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-nvidia-tegra-igx5.15.0-1004.4UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-oem-5.17no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-oem-6.0no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-oem-6.1no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-oem-6.11no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-oem-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-oem-6.8no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-oracle5.15.0-1042.48UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-oracle-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-raspi5.15.0-1037.40UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-raspi-realtimeno fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-realtimeno fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-realtimeno fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-riscvno fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-riscvno fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-riscv-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-riscv-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-starfive-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-starfive-6.2no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-starfive-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-xilinx-zynqmp5.15.0-1025.29UBUNTU-CVE-2023-53256

Affected products (as reported)

VendorProductVersions
Linux Linux e781858488b918e30a6ff28e9eab6058b787e3b3 – before c2f65991097a62efbdb2bed3c06fc86b08c9593be781858488b918e30a6ff28e9eab6058b787e3b3 – before dfc5aaa57f52a5800c339369d235fa30fb734febe781858488b918e30a6ff28e9eab6058b787e3b3 – before 93d0cbe88118fcef234d3ebcbdadcb9ebe9d34f1e781858488b918e30a6ff28e9eab6058b787e3b3 – before 19b8766459c41c6f318f8a548cc1c66dffd18363
Linux Linux 5.14

References