[CVE-2026-97432][MODERATE REGULAR] wifi: iwlwifi: mvm: fix P2P-Device binding handling [ Upstream

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

CVE: CVE-2026-97432
Priority: MODERATE REGULAR
AL-KERNEL base severity: MODERATE
KPANIC flag: NO
Patch: wifi: iwlwifi: mvm: fix P2P-Device binding handling [ Upstream
Commit: 7be2fc679c8f657868988e41c0bb15bf5a454620
Upstream patch: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=7be2fc679c8f657868988e41c0bb15bf5a454620
Original CVE announcement: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-97432
Analysis date: Thu, 24 Sep 2026 18:53:11 -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-2026-97432 is available here:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-97432

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-2026-97432	MODERATE	https://www.kernelcve.org/list/?q=CVE-2026-97432 CHECK WITH IMPACT FROM ORIG NN MODERATE	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-664;*CWE-672;CWE-703;Other CVSS 'AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L';BEST CVSS score: '5.3';DESCR 'A logic error in Intel iwlwifi MVM P2P Device binding handling can leave a P2P Device in a firmware binding after its PHY context has been removed. This state can occur after remain on channel activity ends and a station interface later updates the shared binding. The resulting stale binding can crash the wireless firmware and disrupt WiFi connectivity or trigger firmware recovery. For the CVSS the PR:N value is used for the paranoid score because a nearby P2P peer might be able to influence the required P2P state without local host privileges. This adjacent attack path is not proven by the patch and requires manual verification. Impact is denial of service only. No kernel memory corruption or privilege escalation primitive is demonstrated.';YES REQUIRES MANUAL CHECK; ,and ActionableScore result is Ordinary Moderate (with actual score 1)	YES	REMOTE DANGER NETWORK KERNEL_PANIC_PLUS_UAF HARDWARE TEST  DECREASED_TO_MODERATE_REGULAR_FROM_MODERATE7_BASED_ON_GUESSCVSS_AND_CIANNH	NO	NO	checked

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

ActionableScore=1
PrimitiveClass=CLASS_C
RealUAF=NO
HostAdminRequired=UNKNOWN
NamespaceScopedPrivilege=UNKNOWN
ImportantCandidate=NO
ManualReview=RECOMMENDED
AutoDowngradeAllowed=YES

1. ActionableScore

* Raw conservative score: 1
* Conservative score: 1
* Raw paranoid score: 1
* Paranoid score: 1
* Final recommended bucket: **Ordinary Moderate**::

The score does not apply a host-admin penalty because the supplied patch does not fully establish the privilege boundary for the complete trigger sequence. It also does not award nearby wireless reachability because the patch does not establish that an external P2P peer can independently initiate the required local ROC and binding lifecycle.

2. Signal breakdown

* +1 Reliable device firmware crash or wireless DoS. The commit directly states that the stale P2P Device binding causes firmware crash. This can disrupt WiFi connectivity and may initiate firmware recovery.
* +0 Kernel memory corruption. Not awarded. The stale state is a firmware binding inconsistency, not a demonstrated host-kernel UAF, OOB access, double free, refcount misuse, or controlled overwrite.
* +0 Remote reachable. Not awarded. The affected path is in a wireless driver, but the patch does not establish that attacker-controlled 802.11 traffic alone reaches the vulnerable binding update sequence.
* +0 Firmware-mediated external influence. Not awarded. Firmware is involved in the resulting crash, but external attacker influence over the required ROC, P2P Device lifecycle, and station binding update is not established.
* +0 Local unprivileged trigger. Not awarded. The evidence does not prove that an ordinary user can create and control the needed P2P Device, remain-on-channel operation, and binding sequence.
* +0 Strong or weak exploitation leverage. Not awarded. There is no controlled reclaim, arbitrary write, structured stale host-object use, callback influence, disclosure, authorization bypass, or privilege-escalation mechanism.
* +0 Additional Availability impact. Not awarded. The same firmware crash and WiFi disruption are already represented by the single DoS point.
* +0 Race penalty. Not applied. This is an ordered driver state-management failure, not a demonstrated narrow timing race.

Important non-awarded signals:

* Controlled reclaim is not demonstrated.
* Arbitrary kernel write is not demonstrated.
* Host kernel UAF is not demonstrated.
* Confidentiality and integrity impact are not demonstrated.
* Remote or adjacent attacker reachability is not established by the supplied patch.
* Privilege escalation is not supported by the binding-state inconsistency.
* This is not a concrete repeated release or refcount mutation case.

3. Reachability analysis

The demonstrated sequence requires a connected station interface, a P2P Device remain-on-channel operation on the same channel, ROC completion, a later station binding update, and P2P Device removal. The patch does not identify the userspace actor that creates the P2P Device or requests ROC.

Normally, P2P Device creation and remain-on-channel control are managed through nl80211 and are associated with network-management privileges. However, the supplied context does not prove whether the full vulnerable sequence requires host init-user-namespace CAP_NET_ADMIN, can be performed by a delegated network-management service, or can be induced by a nearby peer against an already configured P2P device.

A nearby WiFi or WiFi Direct peer may participate in practical P2P interactions, but the patch does not prove that such a peer can independently cause the required local ROC and binding changes. Therefore, direct adjacent network reachability remains unresolved rather than established.

The issue requires Intel iwlwifi MVM hardware and active P2P functionality. This is hardware and configuration dependent, but no rare-hardware penalty is applied because Intel WiFi hardware is broadly deployed. The vulnerable P2P workflow itself is less common than ordinary WiFi client traffic.

4. Primitive and severity interpretation

The exact primitive is an invalid firmware binding state. A P2P Device can be removed from a binding after ROC ends while retaining its PHY context as a cache. A later station-interface binding update can incorrectly re-add that inactive P2P Device. Subsequent removal releases the PHY context while firmware still retains the P2P Device in the binding, causing firmware crash.

This is not an active host-kernel structured-object UAF. The patch does not show that a freed host object is dereferenced, that a lifetime reference is decremented twice, or that stale host memory is reused. It also does not establish DMA corruption, firmware compromise, host memory access by firmware, or attacker-controlled firmware payload handling.

The demonstrated consequence is WiFi firmware crash and loss of wireless functionality. A speculative consequence is temporary loss of network connectivity or driver recovery failure. There is no patch-supported basis for host kernel compromise, confidentiality loss, integrity loss, or privilege escalation.

PrimitiveClass is CLASS_C because the behavior is an invalid-state device firmware crash without an independently useful host-kernel corruption primitive. ImportantCandidate is NO because the patch establishes device-local availability impact but no unresolved memory-corruption, ownership, authorization, or security-boundary primitive. AutoDowngradeAllowed is YES because the available evidence supports a constrained DoS classification.

Likely operational severity is Low to ordinary Moderate depending on deployment reliance on the affected WiFi interface.

5. One-sentence report phrase

A stale P2P Device firmware binding can survive PHY context removal in Intel iwlwifi MVM and cause wireless firmware crash or WiFi denial of service when a later station binding update re-adds an inactive P2P Device.

6. Manual review recommendation

MANUAL CHECK RECOMMENDED

Verify whether a nearby unauthenticated P2P peer can induce the complete ROC and binding sequence without local network-management privileges. If this is not possible, the issue can be treated as a local or privileged wireless-driver reliability defect.

7. Call-site confidence

Call-site confidence: medium

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

Patch: wifi: iwlwifi: mvm: fix P2P-Device binding handling [ Upstream
Commit: 7be2fc679c8f657868988e41c0bb15bf5a454620
Upstream URL: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=7be2fc679c8f657868988e41c0bb15bf5a454620

Changed files:
  drivers/net/wireless/intel/iwlwifi/mvm/binding.c
  net/mac80211.h
  drivers/net/wireless/intel/iwlwifi/mvm/mac80211.c
  drivers/net/wireless/intel/iwlwifi/mvm/mvm.h
  drivers/net/wireless/intel/iwlwifi/mvm/time-event.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=7be2fc679c8f657868988e41c0bb15bf5a454620

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

The original Linux kernel CVE announcement for CVE-2026-97432 can be found here:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-97432

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