* [CVE-2026-98426][MODERATE REGULAR] wifi: mwifiex: fix IRQ leak using wrong index in MSI-X error path [ Upstream
@ 2026-10-15 2:22 21% AL-KERNEL
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From: AL-KERNEL @ 2026-10-15 2:22 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: kernel-cve
CVE: CVE-2026-98426
Priority: MODERATE REGULAR
AL-KERNEL base severity: MODERATE
KPANIC flag: NO
Patch: wifi: mwifiex: fix IRQ leak using wrong index in MSI-X error path [ Upstream
Commit: 11bc2cbb14f450eaa47cce9eb086f948ef8f4bcd
Upstream patch: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=11bc2cbb14f450eaa47cce9eb086f948ef8f4bcd
Original CVE announcement: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-98426
Analysis date: Wed, 14 Oct 2026 22:22:21 -0400
ActionableScore: 1
ActionableScore lower bound: unknown
Actionable bucket: Ordinary Moderate
Manual review required: NO
Summary:
No one-sentence report phrase was found.
======================================================================
ABOUT THIS REPORT
======================================================================
The original Linux kernel CVE announcement for CVE-2026-98426 is available here:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-98426
The original announcement does not normally provide a security severity
estimate, CVSS assessment, or enough information to determine whether the
reported kernel bug represents a practically relevant security issue.
This report was generated by AL-KERNEL, an AI-assisted Linux kernel
vulnerability analysis system developed by Alexander Larkin. It combines
an autonomous classifier with LLM-assisted technical analysis and a
separate ActionableScore mechanism.
The purpose of this report is to prioritize Linux kernel CVEs before
manual review, identify cases that require prompt investigation, and
support automatic closure of issues that are unlikely to have meaningful
security impact.
Published priority for this report: MODERATE REGULAR
Manual review required: NO
A detailed explanation of the methodology and priority rules is included
at the end of this message.
======================================================================
AL-KERNEL CLASSIFICATION RESULT
======================================================================
CVE-2026-98426 MODERATE https://www.kernelcve.org/list/?q=CVE-2026-98426 CHECK WITH IMPACT FROM ORIG NN IMPORTANT | AEGIS IMPACT MODERATE AEGIS_AS=1 LEGACY=MODERATE RESULT=SAME (legacy and Aegis reconciliation agree; DECISION: both MODERATE) Maybe valid. Check manually. Hints by AL-KERNEL: The best (paranoid) CVSS is 'AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:H';*CWE-772;CWE-404;*CWE-416;Other CVSS 'AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L';BEST CVSS score: '5.2';DESCR 'The mwifiex MSI-X error path passes the failed vector index as dev_id while attempting to release IRQs registered for earlier indexes. Because free_irq matches both the IRQ number and dev_id, the mismatch leaves previously registered IRQ actions active and produces a warning about freeing a nonexistent IRQ. The demonstrated effect is an IRQ resource leak after a partial request_irq failure. A possible higher impact depends on whether later probe cleanup can release the card object while a leaked IRQ action still retains its handler and dev_id, which could create a stale pointer lifetime risk if the handler remains callable. For the CVSS the PR:H is selected because reliable triggering normally requires administrative control over driver loading or device rebinding together with a partial MSI-X allocation failure. The issue is not remotely reachable through ordinary Wi-Fi traffic. Base impact is limited availability loss, while the paranoid score uses C:L I:L A:H pending verification of the complete cleanup and object lifetime paths. Automated impact decision path. The original SimpleNet classifier selected IMPORTANT. The primary LLM estimated paranoid CVSS 5.2 and the production ActionableScore returned 1 with recommendation Ordinary Moderate. The production rules then evaluated CVSS thresholds and ActionableScore thresholds. Recorded rule transitions were CVSS and initial triage stage IMPORTANT to MODERATE_KPANIC because the CVSS score, vector or bug class threshold rule was applied. ActionableScore thresholds stage MODERATE_KPANIC to MODERATE because the ActionableScore threshold rule was applied. The legacy KP specialist has no review artifact for this run. The legacy FD or DH downgrade specialist has no review artifact for this run. Exact triggered rule markers were LOWERED_FROM_HIGH_BASED_ON_GUESSCVSS and DECREASED_TO_MODERATEREG_BASED_ON_ACTIONABLESCORELESSTHAN4. The independent weaker Aegis shadow evaluated CVSS 2.0 and ActionableScore 1 with primitive class CLASS_C and manual review NO. Its independently reconciled impact was MODERATE. The shadow agreed with the final production impact and aggregation did not change that impact. The final reported impact is MODERATE.';YES REQUIRES MANUAL CHECK; ,and ActionableScore result is Ordinary Moderate (with actual score 1) MAYBE REMOTE LEAK ERRORPATH UAF NETWORK LOWERED_FROM_HIGH_BASED_ON_GUESSCVSS DECREASED_TO_MODERATEREG_BASED_ON_ACTIONABLESCORELESSTHAN4 - - checked
======================================================================
ACTIONABLESCORE ANALYSIS
======================================================================
ActionableScore=1
PrimitiveClass=CLASS_C
RealUAF=NO
HostAdminRequired=UNKNOWN
NamespaceScopedPrivilege=NO
ImportantCandidate=NO
ManualReview=RECOMMENDED
AutoDowngradeAllowed=YES
RequiresHostUID0=UNKNOWN
AuthorizationDecisionBypass=NO
ProtectedResourceImpact=NONE
B4PendingReview=NO
B4PendingConfirmed=NO
1. ActionableScore
* Raw conservative score: 1
* Conservative score: 1
* Raw paranoid score: 1
* Paranoid score: 1
* No floor or cap applied.
* Final recommended bucket: **Ordinary Moderate**::
2. Signal breakdown
* +1 Concrete persistent kernel resource leak. `request_irq()` registers each vector with `&card->msix_ctx[j]`, but cleanup passed `&card->msix_ctx[i]`. Because `free_irq()` matches both IRQ and `dev_id`, the registered IRQ action remains unreleased.
* +0 WARN. The warning about freeing a nonexistent IRQ does not independently establish a crash.
* +0 UAF. The supplied evidence does not show that `card` is freed while the leaked action remains callable or that an interrupt subsequently dereferences a stale `dev_id`.
* +0 Availability. Repeatable IRQ exhaustion, device failure, or host-wide failure is not established.
* +0 Privilege penalty. Host-admin control may permit driver rebind or reload, but a host-admin-equivalent requirement for the complete failure sequence is not positively established.
* +0 Hardware penalty. Compatible PCIe mwifiex hardware is required, but the evidence does not establish physical attacker interaction or sufficiently rare hardware to justify a penalty.
Not awarded:
* Controlled reclaim, arbitrary write, attacker-controlled payload, repeated lifetime mutation, disclosure, authorization bypass, and privilege escalation are not demonstrated.
* No additional paranoid point is awarded merely because a leaked IRQ action could theoretically retain a stale `dev_id`.
* NEW52 B5-R does not apply because there is no heap OOB write or retry-accumulated index.
* NEW53 B3-PENDING does not apply because no shared-backing write exists.
* NEW54 B4-PENDING does not apply because no authorization decision changes from DENY to ALLOW.
3. Reachability analysis
The vulnerable path is reached when MSI-X setup partially succeeds and a later `request_irq()` call fails. Ordinary Wi-Fi traffic does not directly invoke or control this error path.
A host administrator can generally reload, unbind, or rebind the PCIe driver, but the evidence does not establish that an administrator can reliably force failure at a selected MSI-X vector. It also does not establish an ordinary-user or delegated-capability trigger. Therefore `HostAdminRequired` remains `UNKNOWN`.
The IRQ registration and PCIe MSI-X cleanup are host device-management operations, not user-namespace or network-namespace operations. The complete path is therefore not namespace-scoped. A compatible mwifiex PCIe device, MSI-X support, and partial IRQ allocation failure are prerequisites. This is an ordered error path, not a race.
4. Primitive and severity interpretation
The exact established primitive is an IRQ action leak caused by passing the wrong per-vector `dev_id` to `free_irq()`. This leaves an already registered IRQ action outside normal cleanup and is therefore a concrete resource-lifetime defect.
No actual post-lifetime dereference is shown. In particular, the supplied code does not establish that:
* the containing `card` object is subsequently freed;
* the leaked action survives all PCI/MSI-X teardown;
* the corresponding handler remains callable;
* the handler consumes a freed `msix_ctx`.
Accordingly, this is not a confirmed UAF, repeated release, double free, or kernel-memory corruption primitive. It is classified as `CLASS_C`, with a demonstrated warning and resource leak rather than an independently useful exploitation primitive.
The theoretical stale-handler scenario merits limited manual call-path review, but it cannot raise the paranoid score without evidence of post-teardown handler execution. `ImportantCandidate=NO` and `AutoDowngradeAllowed=YES` because no meaningful corruption or boundary-bypass leverage is established. Likely operational severity is Low to ordinary Moderate.
5. One-sentence report phrase
The mwifiex MSI-X failure cleanup passes the wrong per-vector dev_id to free_irq, leaking previously registered IRQ actions, while no confirmed UAF, host-wide denial of service, or privilege-escalation primitive is established.
6. Manual review recommendation
MANUAL CHECK RECOMMENDED
Verify whether the leaked IRQ action can survive `pci_disable_msix()` and later probe unwind after `card` is released, and whether its handler can still execute with a stale `msix_ctx` pointer.
7. Call-site confidence
Call-site confidence: medium
======================================================================
UPSTREAM PATCH SUMMARY
======================================================================
Patch: wifi: mwifiex: fix IRQ leak using wrong index in MSI-X error path [ Upstream
Commit: 11bc2cbb14f450eaa47cce9eb086f948ef8f4bcd
Upstream URL: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=11bc2cbb14f450eaa47cce9eb086f948ef8f4bcd
Changed files:
drivers/net/wireless/marvell/mwifiex/pcie.c
Diff excerpt:
Not included in this email. See the upstream URL for the full patch.
Full patch:
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=11bc2cbb14f450eaa47cce9eb086f948ef8f4bcd
======================================================================
DETAILED REPORT METHODOLOGY
======================================================================
The original Linux kernel CVE announcement for CVE-2026-98426 can be found here:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-98426
The original CVE announcement normally does not include a security-level
estimate. In particular, it may not contain a CVSS assessment, an impact
level, or enough information to determine whether the reported bug is a
practically relevant security issue. One purpose of this parallel CVE list
is to provide that missing technical and prioritization information.
The original goal of the AL-KERNEL project was to prioritize Linux kernel
CVE analysis automatically before manual review. The system can also help
identify non-security issues that may be suitable for automatic closure.
This report was generated by AL-KERNEL, an AI-assisted Linux kernel
vulnerability analysis system developed by Alexander Larkin.
The first analysis stage combines an autonomous classifier with additional
LLM-based analysis. The autonomous classifier runs locally on a CPU and is
based on a backpropagation neural network. Together, these mechanisms
produce a technical vulnerability description, identify likely weakness
types, estimate CVSS severity, and provide input for ActionableScore.
Two CVSS estimates are retained because incomplete kernel vulnerability
information often permits more than one defensible interpretation:
Conservative CVSS vector: AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
The Best / paranoid CVSS vector: AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:H
The Best / paranoid CVSS score: 5.2
The conservative vector represents a lower-impact interpretation.
The Best/paranoid vector intentionally represents a plausible upper-bound
interpretation and should not automatically be treated as demonstrated
real-world impact.
CVSS may also need to be adjusted for a particular Linux deployment,
because actual reachability, privileges, enabled kernel configuration,
hardware, namespaces, exposed device nodes, and other environmental
conditions can differ significantly between systems.
A separate ActionableScore mechanism evaluates practical remediation
urgency. Its analysis may include reachability, attack prerequisites,
subsystem exposure, memory-corruption characteristics, denial-of-service
reliability, and possible confidentiality, integrity, or
privilege-escalation impact.
Conservative ActionableScore: unknown
Paranoid ActionableScore: 1
The final base severity is taken directly from the second tab-separated
field of the AL-KERNEL classification result. ActionableScore does not
replace or independently override that final AL-KERNEL decision, and
if ActionableScore adjusted impact level of ALKERNEL, then you would see
self-readable flags above like INCREASED_TO_HIGH_BASED_ON_ACTIONABLESCOREHIGHEREQTHAN7.
For an AL-KERNEL result of MODERATE, this report uses the following
additional presentation split:
ActionableScore below 5 -> MODERATE REGULAR
ActionableScore 5 or more -> MODERATE 7.0
The distinction between MODERATE REGULAR and MODERATE 7.0 makes it
possible to identify Moderate issues that should receive manual analysis
and fixes before lower-priority MODERATE REGULAR issues. In many cases,
MODERATE REGULAR fixes may wait for a later rebase or routine update.
There is one override in which MODERATE REGULAR becomes MODERATE 7.0
even when the ActionableScore is below 5. When the AL-KERNEL result
contains the KPANIC flag, a MODERATE result is always presented as
MODERATE 7.0. The KPANIC flag selected with few regexps without
usage of AI at all, so it helps to detect cases when Kernel Crash happens
and similar (to filter False-Negative results from the LLM usage).
KPANIC indicates that a reliable kernel crash, kernel panic, or similarly
serious kernel availability impact was identified by the classification
workflow.
AL-KERNEL base severity for this report: MODERATE
KPANIC detected for this report: NO
Published priority for this report (same as in Subject): MODERATE REGULAR
These results are intended to support engineering triage. They are
machine-generated estimates, and cases marked for manual review should
be validated by a human security engineer before final disposition.
For more info read docs linked from here: https://kernelcve.org/
(and you can submit you own patch there to generate such a report
for non-existant CVE-id yet).
Note that in many cases this AI tool selects higher severity, than
real is (means you can expect Importants instead of Moderate 7.0 or
Moderates 7.0 instead of regular Moderates). If you see such cases,
please use reply email interface to add additional manual analyses
info to this particular CVE.
And please, please, let me know when you see Lows instead of Importants
or Important instead of Low (because particular for such cases I
need to tune this AI tool to make it better for this one and next similar).
My contact email for such notifications is [email protected] (and both
send reply to CVE record itself too and see "reply" button below for howto reply).
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