Bug 2540493 (CVE-2026-97492)

Summary: CVE-2026-97492 kernel: wifi: mac80211: don't call ieee80211_handle_reconfig_failure when not needed
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security <prodsec-ir-bot>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: low Docs Contact:
Priority: low    
Version: unspecifiedCC: akhatavk, aos-team-art-private, asdas, dpaolell, jdelft, jupierce, lgarciaa, mbiarnes, ppalepu, ppostler, prdhamdh, rhel-process-autobot, sghai, sidsharm, suppawar, vlaad, watson-tool-maintainers
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's mac80211 wireless subsystem. When reconfiguration of a Neighbor Awareness Networking (NAN) interface fails, the error path prematurely marks active interfaces as absent from the driver before completing state cleanup. This improper handling leaves wireless device drivers with dangling pointers to freed memory structures, which may allow a local attacker to cause a denial of service (DoS) or memory corruption.
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-09-24 17:00:26 UTC 
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

wifi: mac80211: don't call ieee80211_handle_reconfig_failure when not needed

In case reconfiguration of NAN fails, we call
ieee80211_handle_reconfig_failure, that marks all interfaces as not in
the driver.
Then, at the error path of the reconfig, cfg80211_shutdown_all_interfaces
is called to destroy all the interfaces.

If we have any other interface but the NAN one, for example a BSS
station, then when its state (links, stations) will be removed, we
won't tell the driver about this, because we will think that the
interfaces are not in the driver, and then drivers might remain with
dangling pointers to objects like stations and links (at least for
iwlwifi this is the case).

ieee80211_handle_reconfig_failure is meant to be called after we cleaned
up the state in the driver, there is no reason to call it for NAN
reconfiguration failure.

Fix the code to just warn in such a case, as we do in other error paths
in reconfig where it is too complicated to rewind.
Comment 1 Mauro Matteo Cascella 2026-09-29 20:48:02 UTC 
Upstream advisory:
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/security/vulns.git/plain/cve/published/2026/CVE-2026-97492.mbox