Loading story…
CVE-2023-33951 is a moderate-severity race condition in the Linux kernel’s vmwgfx driver affecting its handling of GEM objects. Improper locking can allow a local, highly privileged attacker to disclose kernel-context information, with Red Hat also assessing a low availability impact. Red Hat assigned a CVSS v3.1 score of 6.7; NVD scored it 5.3, reflecting a higher assessed attack complexity.
Red Hat released fixes through errata for affected Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 and 9 kernel package streams between November 2023 and July 2024. RHEL 9 kernel-rt remains listed as affected. Organizations should apply the relevant kernel updates and, where patching is not immediately possible, prevent the vmwgfx kernel module from loading.
See affected versions and whether adversaries are exploiting it.
Vulnerabilities, threat actors, malware, products, organizations, and breaches Mallory has linked to this story.
See whether adversaries are exploiting this yet, and where the affected versions run in your environment.
2 references tracked. Mallory keeps watching after this page renders.
Map indicators from this story to your assets and identify affected systems in minutes.
Every observed campaign, victim, and pivot linked to actors named in this story.
Malware, exploits, and IOCs connected to the activity described here.
YARA, Sigma, and Snort rules deployed to your SIEM as soon as they’re published.
Get matching new stories delivered to your team as they break — not the next morning.
Ask questions about this story and take action on the answers.
Other stories Mallory is tracking that overlap on entities, sources, or topic labels.
**CVE-2023-5633** is a high-severity use-after-free flaw in the Linux kernel's `vmwgfx` graphics driver. Improper reference-count updates in surface memory-object handling—introduced through fixes for CVE-2023-33951 and CVE-2023-33952—can allow a local unprivileged attacker to escalate privileges in VMware guest systems with 3D acceleration enabled. Red Hat rates the issue CVSS 7.8 and maps it to CWE-911, improper update of reference count. The upstream remediation is commit `91398b413d03660fd5828f7b4abc64e884b98069`; Fedora included a fix in its 6.5.8 stable kernel update, and Red Hat released updated kernel packages for affected RHEL 8, RHEL 9, 8.8 EUS, and 9.2 EUS systems. RHEL 9 `kernel-rt` remains affected; organizations unable to patch should disable VMware 3D acceleration or prevent the `vmwgfx` module from loading.
Aug 26, 2026
**CVE-2023-52648** is a moderate-severity flaw in the Linux kernel's VMware graphics driver, `drm/vmwgfx`, that can let a local user trigger a denial of service through a kernel null-pointer dereference. When a plane state changes, the driver can unreference a cached surface without clearing its mapped-state flag, leaving duplicated plane-state data inconsistent; cleanup can then crash the kernel. The issue was observed with KDE KWin 6.0 on Wayland and affects code introduced in Linux kernel 5.19. The defect is fixed in upstream Linux kernel versions 6.6.24, 6.7.12, 6.8.3, and 6.9-rc1. Red Hat assigned CVSS 3.1 score **5.5** and released corrected kernel packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 and 9, including RHEL 9.4 Extended Update Support; the RHEL 9 `kernel-rt` package remained affected, while RHEL 6 and 7 were outside support scope. Organizations should deploy current vendor kernel updates rather than cherry-picking the individual patch.
Aug 26, 2026
**CVE-2023-52662** is a low-severity memory-leak flaw in the Linux kernel's VMware graphics driver, `drm/vmwgfx`. In `vmw_gmrid_man_get_node`, failure of `ida_alloc_max` can leave `kmalloc`-allocated memory and resources initialized through `ttm_resource_init` unfreed, potentially causing a local, low-privileged user to exhaust system memory and affect availability. The issue was introduced in Linux kernel 5.14 and has a CVSS v3.1 score of 5.5. The flaw is fixed in upstream stable kernels 5.15.153, 6.1.83, 6.6.23, 6.7.11, 6.8.2, and 6.9. Red Hat released corrected standard and real-time kernel packages for RHEL 8 and standard kernel packages for RHEL 9, including RHEL 9.4 EUS; the RHEL 9 real-time kernel fix remains deferred. RHEL 6 and RHEL 7 kernel packages are outside support scope and should be treated as affected unless mitigated or upgraded. Organizations should deploy supported updated kernel packages and reboot affected hosts.
Aug 26, 2026