CVE-2026-98708 PUBLISHED

wifi: mac80211: keep paired old chanctx alive

Assigner: Linux
Reserved: 25.09.2026 Published: 18.10.2026 Updated: 18.10.2026

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

wifi: mac80211: keep paired old chanctx alive

An in-place replacement keeps reciprocal replace_ctx pointers between the old WILL_BE_REPLACED chanctx and the new REPLACES_OTHER chanctx. However, the early free paths only consider assigned and reserved link users when deciding whether to free the old chanctx.

That lets the old chanctx be freed too early while the replacement partner still points back to it, either when the last assigned link is released or when that link successfully reassigns to another existing context. Later unreserve and switch-finalization paths can then follow a stale replace_ctx pointer.

Keep a paired old chanctx alive until the replacement pair has been torn down. Apply the same check to both __ieee80211_link_release_channel() and ieee80211_link_use_reserved_reassign(). If the replacement is later abandoned, ieee80211_link_unreserve_chanctx() already tears down the pairing before freeing the old chanctx once no users remain.

Product Status

Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 5bcae31d9cb1ebfad3ad5a3eea04c8cdc329a04f to 21a688cbeae0e682f03e91f1e7a7eedd60d9d4f2 (excl.)
  • affected from 5bcae31d9cb1ebfad3ad5a3eea04c8cdc329a04f to 1c82d0c5d509179ba2a4edfa096f516aebf960b0 (excl.)
  • affected from 5bcae31d9cb1ebfad3ad5a3eea04c8cdc329a04f to afd1cdd16a25c7185b812a612ab7d5f2cbd1e086 (excl.)
  • affected from 5bcae31d9cb1ebfad3ad5a3eea04c8cdc329a04f to 3412e9a800786d1dec4a58367db1cba275e7ef11 (excl.)
Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: affected
  • Version 3.17 is affected
  • unaffected from 0 to 3.17 (excl.)
  • unaffected from 6.12.113 to 6.12.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.18.56 to 6.18.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.2.10 to 7.2.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.3-rc6 to * (incl.)

References