Bug 2356644 (CVE-2025-21909)

Summary: CVE-2025-21909 kernel: wifi: nl80211: reject cooked mode if it is set along with other flags
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
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Priority: low    
Version: unspecifiedCC: dfreiber, drow, jburrell, vkumar
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
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Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2025-04-01 16:04:11 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

wifi: nl80211: reject cooked mode if it is set along with other flags

It is possible to set both MONITOR_FLAG_COOK_FRAMES and MONITOR_FLAG_ACTIVE
flags simultaneously on the same monitor interface from the userspace. This
causes a sub-interface to be created with no IEEE80211_SDATA_IN_DRIVER bit
set because the monitor interface is in the cooked state and it takes
precedence over all other states. When the interface is then being deleted
the kernel calls WARN_ONCE() from check_sdata_in_driver() because of missing
that bit.

Fix this by rejecting MONITOR_FLAG_COOK_FRAMES if it is set along with
other flags.

Found by Linux Verification Center (linuxtesting.org) with Syzkaller.