From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: AL-KERNEL To: kernel-cve@kernelcve.org Subject: [CVE-2026-98329][LOW] wifi: mac80211: don't allow injecting frames wider than the chanctx [ Upstream Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2026 17:40:57 -0400 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-AL-KERNEL-CVE: CVE-2026-98329 X-AL-KERNEL-Priority: LOW X-AL-KERNEL-Severity: LOW X-AL-KERNEL-Base-Severity: LOW X-AL-KERNEL-KPANIC: NO X-AL-KERNEL-ActionableScore: 1 X-AL-KERNEL-ActionableScore-Lower: 0 X-AL-KERNEL-Commit: a5c715eda066cba5ce3372759188ba8636dca629 List-Id: CVE: CVE-2026-98329 Priority: LOW AL-KERNEL base severity: LOW KPANIC flag: NO Patch: wifi: mac80211: don't allow injecting frames wider than the chanctx [ Upstream Commit: a5c715eda066cba5ce3372759188ba8636dca629 Upstream patch: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=a5c715eda066cba5ce3372759188ba8636dca629 Original CVE announcement: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-98329 Analysis date: Tue, 06 Oct 2026 17:40:57 -0400 ActionableScore: 1 ActionableScore lower bound: 0 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-2026-98329 is available here: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-98329 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. ====================================================================== AL-KERNEL CLASSIFICATION RESULT ====================================================================== CVE-2026-98329 LOW https://www.kernelcve.org/list/?q=CVE-2026-98329 CHECK WITH IMPACT FROM ORIG NN MODERATE 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-20;CWE-1284;CWE-617;Other CVSS 'AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L';BEST CVSS score: '4.7';DESCR 'mac80211 accepted an injected monitor mode frame with a radiotap bandwidth wider than the active channel definition and passed the invalid rate information to the driver. This can trigger a driver WARN and may cause log flooding or local availability degradation when repeatedly triggered. For the CVSS the PR:L is used because a local process needs access to a monitor interface and packet injection capabilities such as CAP_NET_RAW. The issue is not directly network reachable because it is triggered through local userspace frame injection rather than ordinary wireless traffic. Impact is normally limited to low availability impact. A higher availability impact is possible only when panic_on_warn is enabled.';NO MANUAL CHECK; ,and ActionableScore result is Ordinary Moderate (with actual score 1) MAYBE REMOTE DANGER INIT SKB HARDWARE SYZBOT PACKET DECREASED_TO_MODERATE_REGULAR_FROM_MODERATE7_BASED_ON_GUESSCVSS_AND_CIANNH DECREASED_TO_LOW_FROM_MODERATE_BASED_ON_ACTIONABLESCORELESSTHAN3 - - guess ====================================================================== ACTIONABLESCORE ANALYSIS ====================================================================== ActionableScore=1 ActionableScoreLower=0 PrimitiveClass=NONE RealUAF=NO HostAdminRequired=UNKNOWN NamespaceScopedPrivilege=UNKNOWN ImportantCandidate=NO ManualReview=NO AutoDowngradeAllowed=YES 1. ActionableScore * Raw conservative score: 0 * Conservative score: 0 * Raw paranoid score: 1 * Paranoid score: 1 * Final recommended bucket: **Ordinary Moderate**:: No floor or cap was applied. 2. Signal breakdown Conservative signals: * +0 Input validation defect. Userspace can submit radiotap TX rate flags whose requested bandwidth exceeds the active channel definition. * +0 WARN only. The demonstrated consequence is a WARN_ON in hwsim. A warning by itself is not a demonstrated kernel crash, memory-corruption primitive, confidentiality impact, integrity impact, or persistent availability failure. * +0 No Local unprivileged trigger. The complete trigger requires access to a monitor interface and packet injection permissions. The supplied evidence does not establish that an ordinary unprivileged user can complete all stages. * +0 No remote reachability. The malformed input is injected locally through a monitor-mode network device, not received from ordinary WiFi traffic. * +0 No UAF, stale reference, refcount misuse, OOB access, write primitive, or ownership violation is established. Paranoid signals: * +1 Reliable kernel crash or strong DoS under panic_on_warn. The malformed injected frame can reach a WARN_ON. On systems configured with panic_on_warn, this warning can terminate the kernel. This is configuration-dependent and is not used in the conservative score. Important non-awarded signals: * Controlled reclaim is not demonstrated. * Arbitrary or directed kernel write is not demonstrated. * Confidentiality and integrity impact are not demonstrated. * Privilege escalation is not demonstrated. * Structured stale-object leverage is not applicable because no stale object or lifetime violation exists. * Extra availability impact is not awarded because log flooding or repeated warning effects are not concretely established by the supplied patch. * Remote reachability is not established. * No race or timing primitive is present. 3. Reachability analysis The triggering actor is a local userspace process that injects frames through an existing mac80211 monitor interface. The malformed radiotap metadata requests a TX bandwidth larger than the active channel definition. The exact complete privilege boundary is unresolved. Raw packet injection normally requires CAP_NET_RAW. Creating or configuring monitor-mode wireless interfaces normally involves CAP_NET_ADMIN, but the patch does not establish whether the attacker must create the interface or can use an already available monitor interface. Host-admin-equivalent privilege is therefore not positively established. Below-host-admin reachability is also not positively established for the complete operation. HostAdminRequired is UNKNOWN. NamespaceScopedPrivilege is UNKNOWN. Wireless PHY devices and monitor interface setup can involve host-owned physical wireless hardware. The supplied context does not establish that an attacker-created namespace can create the required monitor interface, inject frames, and reach the vulnerable hardware path without host-controlled setup. No special hardware is required for the hwsim reproducer, but hwsim is a test or virtual wireless environment rather than evidence of broad production exposure. No race is involved. 4. Primitive and severity interpretation The exact primitive is insufficient validation of radiotap-requested transmission bandwidth against the active channel context. mac80211 previously propagated invalid rate information to the driver. hwsim detects the mismatch through WARN_ON. This is neither an active structured-object lifetime bug nor fixed stale storage. There is no UAF, double free, refcount mutation, OOB access, invalid free, semantic ownership violation, or authorization bypass. The demonstrated consequence is a warning. The patch-supported paranoid consequence is kernel panic only where panic_on_warn is enabled. That configuration-dependent panic does not create a memory-corruption or privilege-escalation primitive. PrimitiveClass is NONE because no meaningful corruption, lifetime, authorization, or security-boundary primitive is established. ImportantCandidate is NO because the issue is a validation defect with warning-level behavior and no unresolved exploitation leverage. AutoDowngradeAllowed is YES because no concrete Important-preserving primitive would be lost by treating this as low-priority. Likely operational severity is low. Systems with panic_on_warn enabled should still apply the fix as part of normal kernel maintenance because a local packet-injection actor may trigger host unavailability. 5. One-sentence report phrase A local process with monitor interface access can inject a radiotap frame requesting a bandwidth wider than the active channel definition, triggering a driver warning and potentially a kernel panic only when panic_on_warn is enabled. 6. Manual review recommendation NO MANUAL CHECK NEEDED The patch establishes an input-validation failure leading to WARN_ON behavior only, with no demonstrated memory corruption, lifetime violation, security-boundary bypass, remote trigger, or privilege-escalation path. 7. Call-site confidence Call-site confidence: medium ====================================================================== UPSTREAM PATCH SUMMARY ====================================================================== Patch: wifi: mac80211: don't allow injecting frames wider than the chanctx [ Upstream Commit: a5c715eda066cba5ce3372759188ba8636dca629 Upstream URL: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=a5c715eda066cba5ce3372759188ba8636dca629 Changed files: include/net/mac80211.h net/mac80211/iface.c net/mac80211/tx.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=a5c715eda066cba5ce3372759188ba8636dca629 ====================================================================== DETAILED REPORT METHODOLOGY ====================================================================== The original Linux kernel CVE announcement for CVE-2026-98329 can be found here: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-98329 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:L/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: 0 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: 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).