CVE Catalog

CVE-2026-98708

Low risk· EPSS 6%
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk
0.17%

6th percentile - higher than 6% of all known CVEs

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the mac80211 wifi module was fixed for premature freeing of the old WILL_BE_REPLACED chanctx during in-place replacement. Early free paths only considered assigned and reserved link users, so the old chanctx could be freed while the replacement partner still pointed back to it.

Risk Assessment

Later unreserve and switch-finalization paths may follow a stale replace_ctx pointer, leading to use-after-free.

Recommendation

Update the Linux kernel to a version with the fix that keeps a paired old chanctx alive until the replacement pair is torn down.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

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Original NVD description (English source)

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.

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS