Bug 2555067 (CVE-2026-98708)

Summary: CVE-2026-98708 kernel: kernel: mac80211: Denial of Service via use-after-free in channel context replacement
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: rhel-process-autobot, 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. A local user could exploit this flaw to cause a Denial of Service (DoS) or system instability. During in-place channel context replacement, an old channel context can be freed prematurely while still referenced by its replacement context. Subsequent link operations access the stale pointer, triggering a use-after-free condition that leads to a kernel crash.
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-10-18 15:52:34 UTC 
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.