Bug 2546511 (CVE-2026-98196)

Summary: CVE-2026-98196 kernel: wifi: brcmsmac: fix UAF in brcms_free_timer()
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
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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Fixed In Version: Doc Type: ---
Doc Text:
A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's brcmsmac wireless driver. When a timer is released, the driver fails to wait for running background tasks associated with the timer to finish before freeing memory. A local attacker could exploit this race condition to trigger a use-after-free condition, leading to a system crash, denial of service (DoS), or potentially arbitrary code execution.
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-10-06 09:36:54 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

wifi: brcmsmac: fix UAF in brcms_free_timer()

brcms_free_timer() calls brcms_del_timer() which uses the non-synchronous
cancel_delayed_work() to cancel the timer's underlying delayed work.  If
the work callback (_brcms_timer) is already running, cancel_delayed_work()
returns false without waiting, and brcms_free_timer() proceeds to kfree(t)
while the callback still accesses t through container_of().

Add an explicit cancel_delayed_work_sync() after brcms_del_timer() to
guarantee that any in-flight callback has completed before the timer
structure is freed.