[CVE-2026-46271][LOW] wifi: ath12k: do WoW offloads only on primary link [ Upstream

[CVE-2026-46271][LOW] wifi: ath12k: do WoW offloads only on primary link [ Upstream

[AL-KERNEL]

CVE: CVE-2026-46271
Priority: LOW
AL-KERNEL base severity: LOW
KPANIC flag: NO
Patch: wifi: ath12k: do WoW offloads only on primary link [ Upstream
Commit: 7379837c3f9efa576dc2d716ebfaa3a113b3112f
Upstream patch: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=7379837c3f9efa576dc2d716ebfaa3a113b3112f
Original CVE announcement: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-46271
Analysis date: Wed, 03 Jun 2026 16:03:59 -0400
ActionableScore: 2
ActionableScore lower bound: 1
Actionable bucket: Ordinary Moderate / Low-like
Manual review required: NO

Summary:
ath12k may crash WCN7850 firmware during WoW handling on MLO connections because offloads are programmed on both primary and secondary links, causing a local hardware-specific Wi-Fi denial of service without evidence of kernel memory corruption or privilege escalation.

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ABOUT THIS REPORT
======================================================================

The original Linux kernel CVE announcement for CVE-2026-46271 is available here:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-46271

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: LOW
Manual review required: NO

A detailed explanation of the methodology and priority rules is included
at the end of this message.

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AL-KERNEL CLASSIFICATION RESULT
======================================================================

CVE-2026-46271	LOW	CHECK	Maybe valid. Check manually. Hints by AL-KERNEL: The best (paranoid) CVSS is 'AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H';CWE-703;CWE-754;CWE-404;Other CVSS 'AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L';BEST CVSS score: '4.7';DESCR 'ath12k can crash WCN7850 firmware during WoW handling on an MLO connection because WoW offloads are applied on both primary and secondary links. This can disrupt Wi-Fi availability during suspend or wake related paths on affected hardware and firmware combinations. For the CVSS the PR:L is used for the paranoid score because a local user or local management process may be able to trigger suspend or WoW handling without full kernel level privileges, while reliable setup still depends on local device state and configuration. The issue is not directly network reachable and does not appear to be triggered by normal packet traffic alone. Impact is denial of service for the wireless device or firmware only. No evidence of kernel memory corruption, information disclosure, or privilege escalation is present in the patch context.';NO MANUAL CHECK; ,and ActionableScore result is Ordinary Moderate / Low-like (with actual score 2) 	MAYBE	REMOTE DANGER SIMPLEFIX NETWORK KERNEL_PANIC_PLUS_UAF LINUS  LOWERED_FROM_HIGH_BASED_ON_GUESSCVSS  DECREASED_TO_MODERATEREG_BASED_ON_ACTIONABLESCORELESSTHAN5 DECREASED_TO_LOW_FROM_MODERATE_BASED_ON_ACTIONABLESCORELESSTHAN3	-	-	checked

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ACTIONABLESCORE ANALYSIS
======================================================================

ActionableScore=2
ActionableScoreLower=1

## 1. ActionableScore

* Conservative score: 1
* Paranoid score: 2
* Final recommended bucket: **Ordinary Moderate / Low-like**::

## 2. Signal breakdown

* Firmware-mediated external influence: +1. The failure occurs in WCN7850 firmware after the driver enables WoW offloads on both primary and secondary MLO links.
* Local unprivileged trigger, paranoid only: +1. A local user or local power-management service may be able to trigger suspend or WoW handling depending on system policy, but reliable setup likely depends on existing Wi-Fi configuration.
* Reliable device DoS, paranoid only: +1. The described impact is firmware crash and wireless device availability loss, not a confirmed kernel panic.
* Physical-only or rare hardware-only condition: -2. The issue is specific to ath12k WCN7850 MLO plus WoW/offload behavior.
* Rare and difficult-to-reach configuration: conservative -1. Triggering requires affected hardware, MLO connection, WoW enabled, and suspend/wake related paths.

No memory corruption, UAF, OOB write, information leak, privilege escalation, or shared-page corruption primitive is supported by the patch.

## 3. Reachability analysis

The likely trigger is local control-plane or power-management activity that enters WoW handling on an affected WCN7850 device in an MLO connection. It is not directly reachable from network packet traffic. Namespaces and containers do not materially improve reachability unless they can influence host Wi-Fi power management or suspend behavior. The path is not broadly default-exposed because it depends on specific Qualcomm ath12k hardware, firmware, MLO, and WoW configuration.

## 4. Severity interpretation

This behaves like a hardware and firmware specific availability bug, not an Important-class kernel vulnerability. The realistic impact is disruption of Wi-Fi firmware or device availability. Theoretical escalation is not supported because the patch only restricts offload programming to the primary link and does not fix kernel memory lifetime, bounds, or object ownership corruption.

## 5. One-sentence report phrase

ath12k may crash WCN7850 firmware during WoW handling on MLO connections because offloads are programmed on both primary and secondary links, causing a local hardware-specific Wi-Fi denial of service without evidence of kernel memory corruption or privilege escalation.

## 6. Manual review recommendation

NO MANUAL CHECK NEEDED

This can be auto-closed for most environments because it is device-specific firmware DoS with low practical security impact and no supported memory corruption or privilege escalation primitive.

======================================================================
UPSTREAM PATCH SUMMARY
======================================================================

Patch: wifi: ath12k: do WoW offloads only on primary link [ Upstream
Commit: 7379837c3f9efa576dc2d716ebfaa3a113b3112f
Upstream URL: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=7379837c3f9efa576dc2d716ebfaa3a113b3112f

Changed files:
  drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath12k/wow.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=7379837c3f9efa576dc2d716ebfaa3a113b3112f

======================================================================
DETAILED REPORT METHODOLOGY
======================================================================

The original Linux kernel CVE announcement for CVE-2026-46271 can be found here:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-46271

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:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
  The Best / paranoid CVSS vector: AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
  The Best / paranoid CVSS score: 4.7

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: 1
  Paranoid ActionableScore: 2

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: LOW
KPANIC detected for this report: NO
Published priority for this report (same as in Subject): LOW

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 alexanjelausa@gmail.com (and both
send reply to CVE record itself too and see "reply" button below for howto reply).