[CVE-2026-74368][MODERATE REGULAR] wifi: ath12k: fix memory leak in ath12k_wifi7_dp_rx_h_verify_tkip_mic() [ Upstream

[AL-KERNEL <alkernel@kernelcve.org>]

CVE: CVE-2026-74368
Priority: MODERATE REGULAR
AL-KERNEL base severity: MODERATE
KPANIC flag: NO
Patch: wifi: ath12k: fix memory leak in ath12k_wifi7_dp_rx_h_verify_tkip_mic() [ Upstream
Commit: 5187a92099778501f21af76ed6c8415d128e7298
Upstream patch: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=5187a92099778501f21af76ed6c8415d128e7298
Original CVE announcement: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-74368
Analysis date: Sat, 15 Aug 2026 07:59:59 -0400
ActionableScore: 3
ActionableScore lower bound: 2
Actionable bucket: Borderline manual review recommended. Not an Important candidate by itself
Manual review required: YES

Summary:
A malformed WiFi frame reaching the ath12k WiFi7 TKIP MIC verification path can cause an MSDU skb leak on invalid NWIFI header validation, allowing adjacent attackers to potentially cause resource-exhaustion DoS on affected hardware.

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ABOUT THIS REPORT
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The original Linux kernel CVE announcement for CVE-2026-74368 is available here:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-74368

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: YES

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
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CVE-2026-74368	MODERATE	CHECK WITH IMPACT FROM ORIG NN IMPORTANT	Maybe valid. Check manually. Hints by AL-KERNEL: The best (paranoid) CVSS is 'AV:A/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H';*CWE-401;*CWE-772;**CWE-400;Other CVSS 'AV:A/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L';BEST CVSS score: '5.3';DESCR 'A memory leak in `ath12k_wifi7_dp_rx_h_verify_tkip_mic()` can occur when NWIFI header length validation fails during TKIP MIC verification. The RX path returns an error before freeing the current MSDU skb, and the defragmentation path can then drop its reference by clearing first_frag. A nearby wireless attacker may be able to trigger repeated leaks by delivering malformed frames that reach this ath12k WiFi7 RX path, although practical exposure depends on the affected hardware, driver configuration, and whether TKIP related traffic is accepted. For the CVSS the PR:N is used because the attacker does not need a local account on the target host, only adjacent wireless reachability to the device. Impact is denial of service through resource exhaustion, with no concrete evidence of UAF, OOB access, information disclosure, or privilege escalation.';YES REQUIRES MANUAL CHECK; ,and ActionableScore result is Borderline manual review recommended. Not an Important candidate by itself (with actual score 3)	YES	REMOTE SIMPLEFIX LEAK ERRORPATH NETWORK SKB LINUS  LOWERED_FROM_HIGH_BASED_ON_GUESSCVSS  DECREASED_TO_MODERATEREG_BASED_ON_ACTIONABLESCORELESSTHAN5	YES	NO	checked

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ACTIONABLESCORE ANALYSIS
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ActionableScore=3
ActionableScoreLower=2

## 1. ActionableScore

* Conservative score: 2
* Paranoid score: 3
* Final recommended bucket: **Borderline manual review recommended. Not an Important candidate by itself**

## 2. Signal breakdown

Conservative signals:

* Remote or adjacent network-triggerable: +2
  A nearby wireless attacker may be able to deliver malformed frames that reach the ath12k WiFi7 RX path. This is not Internet-remote, but it is externally triggerable over WiFi adjacency.
* Availability impact realistic: +1
  The bug leaks an MSDU skb on an error path. Repeated triggering may cause resource exhaustion.
* Rare and configuration-dependent path: -1
  Exposure depends on ath12k WiFi7 hardware, the affected RX path, TKIP MIC verification, NWIFI handling, and malformed frames reaching this code.

Paranoid additional signal:

* Sustained resource exhaustion DoS concern: +1
  If malformed frames can be repeatedly accepted into this path, the skb leak could accumulate until memory pressure or service disruption occurs.

Not awarded:

* No generic memory corruption. The patch shows a leak fixed by `dev_kfree_skb_any(msdu)`, not UAF, double free, OOB write, or type confusion.
* No privilege escalation plausibility. There is no reclaim, stale callback, attacker-controlled reuse, or write primitive.
* No confidentiality or integrity impact. The impact is resource exhaustion only.

## 3. Reachability analysis

The likely attacker is a nearby wireless actor able to transmit frames that reach the affected ath12k receive path. No local account on the target host is required, so this is not a local PR:L-style interface. Namespaces and containers are not relevant because the trigger is external wireless traffic, not a local syscall or netlink path.

The path is not broadly default-exposed like TCP/IP core networking. It depends on specific Qualcomm ath12k WiFi7 hardware and on traffic reaching TKIP MIC / NWIFI validation logic. Practical exploitability therefore needs hardware and configuration confirmation.

## 4. Severity interpretation

This behaves like a Low to borderline Moderate resource-exhaustion issue, not an Important-class memory corruption vulnerability. The theoretical worst case is sustained availability loss through repeated skb leaks. Realistic evidence supports DoS/resource exhaustion only, with no demonstrated privilege escalation, information leak, or integrity violation.

## 5. One-sentence report phrase

A malformed WiFi frame reaching the ath12k WiFi7 TKIP MIC verification path can cause an MSDU skb leak on invalid NWIFI header validation, allowing adjacent attackers to potentially cause resource-exhaustion DoS on affected hardware.

## 6. Manual review recommendation

MANUAL CHECK RECOMMENDED

Manual review is recommended because the issue is externally triggerable over adjacent wireless traffic, but it is configuration and hardware dependent and appears limited to memory leak based DoS.

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

Patch: wifi: ath12k: fix memory leak in ath12k_wifi7_dp_rx_h_verify_tkip_mic() [ Upstream
Commit: 5187a92099778501f21af76ed6c8415d128e7298
Upstream URL: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=5187a92099778501f21af76ed6c8415d128e7298

Changed files:
  drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath12k/wifi7/dp_rx.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=5187a92099778501f21af76ed6c8415d128e7298

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

The original Linux kernel CVE announcement for CVE-2026-74368 can be found here:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-74368

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:A/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
  The Best / paranoid CVSS vector: AV:A/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
  The Best / paranoid CVSS score: 5.3

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: 2
  Paranoid ActionableScore: 3

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