CVE-2026-98307 PUBLISHED

wifi: ath11k: cleanup arsta in ath11k_mac_peer_cleanup_all()

Assigner: Linux
Reserved: 25.09.2026 Published: 06.10.2026 Updated: 06.10.2026

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

wifi: ath11k: cleanup arsta in ath11k_mac_peer_cleanup_all()

When mac80211 removes a sta, it calls .sta_state() which in turn calls ath11k_mac_station_remove(). In that function we clean up both peers & arsta related resources.

But when the firmware crashes, ath11k calls ieee80211_restart_hw(), which assumes that all driver related resources are cleaned up beforehand. This cleanup is supposedly done by ath11k_mac_peer_cleanup_all() but does not in fact free arsta->rx_stats / tx_stats.

Extract the arsta cleanup from ath11k_mac_station_remove() into a new ath11k_mac_station_cleanup() and call it from both there and ath11k_mac_peer_cleanup_all().

This should handle kmemleaks reports like: unreferenced object 0xffffff801ae66400 (size 1024): comm "hostapd", pid 1306, jiffies 4295011565 hex dump (first 32 bytes): 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ backtrace (crc d61c08ec): kmemleak_alloc+0x3c/0x50 __kmalloc_cache_noprof+0x2b0/0x3e0 ath11k_mac_op_sta_state+0x1dc/0xb10 drv_sta_state+0xac/0x6f8 sta_info_insert_rcu+0x314/0x5e0 sta_info_insert+0x14/0x38 ieee80211_add_station+0x10c/0x1a0 nl80211_new_station+0x3e8/0x680 genl_family_rcv_msg_doit+0xc0/0x120 genl_rcv_msg+0x1b4/0x258 netlink_rcv_skb+0x4c/0x108 genl_rcv+0x38/0x60 netlink_unicast+0x190/0x278 netlink_sendmsg+0x15c/0x370 _syssendmsg+0x120/0x290 _sys_sendmsg+0x70/0xa0

Tested-on: QCN9074 hw1.0 PCI WLAN.HK.2.9.0.1-01977-QCAHKSWPL_SILICONZ-1

Product Status

Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from d5c65159f2895379e11ca13f62feabe93278985d to c4108dce0838ec7d38d782f76f9c007cfe2fff45 (excl.)
  • affected from d5c65159f2895379e11ca13f62feabe93278985d to 57bc3cd46458eafa1c38e3044a61b7399cde7642 (excl.)
  • affected from d5c65159f2895379e11ca13f62feabe93278985d to be1d5e95ec499ed5ee9704aa27dd1407ccf0d0ac (excl.)
  • affected from d5c65159f2895379e11ca13f62feabe93278985d to 820b8cff81c796ba20573e04722ab62500713f97 (excl.)
Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: affected
  • Version 5.6 is affected
  • unaffected from 0 to 5.6 (excl.)
  • unaffected from 6.12.112 to 6.12.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.18.54 to 6.18.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.2.8 to 7.2.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.3-rc4 to * (incl.)

References