CVE-2023-54298: 
Linux Kernel vulnerability analysis and mitigation

CVE-2023-54298 is a Linux kernel vulnerability in the thermal: intel: quark_dts driver involving an error pointer dereference. When alloc_soc_dts() fails, the code incorrectly attempts to free the soc_dts pointer rather than returning immediately, leading to a kernel Oops (crash). The vulnerability affects Linux kernel versions from 4.2 onward, with fixes backported to stable releases including 4.14.308, 4.19.276, 5.4.235, 5.10.173, 5.15.100, 6.1.18, 6.2.5, and 6.3. It was published on December 30, 2025, with an EPSS score of approximately 0.024% (Feedly, ENISA EUVD).

The root cause is an improper error handling path (CWE-476: NULL Pointer Dereference / error pointer dereference) in the Intel Quark DTS thermal driver (drivers/thermal/intel/quark_dts_thermal.c). When alloc_soc_dts() returns an error pointer and the caller proceeds to invoke a free/cleanup function on that invalid pointer, the kernel encounters an invalid memory access and triggers an Oops. The fix is straightforward: upon detecting a failure from alloc_soc_dts(), the code should return immediately without attempting to dereference or free the error pointer. This is a local kernel-level issue confined to systems running Intel Quark SoC hardware with the affected driver loaded (ENISA EUVD).

Successful triggering of this vulnerability causes a kernel Oops, resulting in a system crash and denial of service on affected hardware. Because the flaw resides in a hardware-specific thermal management driver (Intel Quark SoC), the impact is limited to systems using that particular platform. There is no evidence of confidentiality or integrity impact; the primary consequence is availability loss due to the kernel panic (Feedly).

Apply the upstream Linux kernel patches that fix the error handling in the quark_dts thermal driver. Fixed versions include stable releases 4.14.308, 4.19.276, 5.4.235, 5.10.173, 5.15.100, 6.1.18, 6.2.5, and 6.3. Administrators running Linux on Intel Quark SoC hardware should update to a patched kernel version. If upgrading is not immediately possible, disabling or blacklisting the quark_dts_thermal kernel module (modprobe -r quark_dts_thermal) can mitigate the risk on affected systems (ENISA EUVD).