Linux Kernel: mac80211 TX Rate Metadata Validation Prevents OOB Indexing
CVE-2026-98824 Published on October 18, 2026
wifi: mac80211: validate TX status rate metadata
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
wifi: mac80211: validate TX status rate metadata
minstrel_ht_tx_status() converts the HT/VHT rate reported in a TX status
into a group and rate index and uses those to index the minstrel_ht rate
tables. The existing validation only checked that an entry was present
and had tries recorded; it did not check that the reported MCS, spatial
stream count and bandwidth are representable by the tables, so malformed
metadata passed to minstrel_ht_get_stats() or
minstrel_ht_ri_get_stats() could be used as an out-of-bounds index.
Validate the rate metadata in the common TX status path instead of only
in minstrel_ht, since the values are used by more than rate control.
The legacy ieee80211_tx_rate array and the rate_info based entries are
sanitized in ieee80211_tx_status_ext() and ieee80211_tx_rate_update()
before any consumer runs: an entry that does not describe a valid rate
for its encoding is dropped. minstrel_ht keeps the checks that depend
on its own tables, i.e. the supported number of spatial streams, the MCS
group size and the supported bandwidths.
This does not take away the driver's responsibility to report sane
values, it only prevents a single bad report from corrupting mac80211
state. No WARN_ON() is added: with panic_on_warn a driver bug would
otherwise turn into a denial of service.
Products Associated with CVE-2026-98824
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Affected Versions
Linux:- Version a5f69d94d8e239b48299abdd836840b7447866ab and below b1961a61ab6fbe11f16f7f9b64c57a9908c6c3a8 is affected.
- Version a5f69d94d8e239b48299abdd836840b7447866ab and below 6bdcdb31318c10e6369cff8e5b32c37397e98091 is affected.
- Version 3.3 is affected.
- Before 3.3 is unaffected.
- Version 7.2.10, <= 7.2.* is unaffected.
- Version 7.3-rc6, <= * is unaffected.