wifi: mac80211: always free skb on ieee80211_tx_prepare_skb() failure (Linux Linux)

CVE-2026-23444
HIGH 7.8

At a glance

Source
NVD
EPSS
EPSS 0.14 % · percentile 3 ()
State
PUBLISHED
Published
Updated
Assigner
Linux
NVD status
Modified

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: wifi: mac80211: always free skb on ieee80211_tx_prepare_skb() failure ieee80211_tx_prepare_skb() has three error paths, but only two of them free the skb. The first error path (ieee80211_tx_prepare() returning TX_DROP) does not free it, while invoke_tx_handlers() failure and the fragmentation check both do. Add kfree_skb() to the first error path so all three are consistent, and remove the now-redundant frees in callers (ath9k, mt76, mac80211_hwsim) to avoid double-free. Document the skb ownership guarantee in the function's kdoc.

Weaknesses (CWE)

  • CWE-401 — Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime

References

Scores

VersionScoreVectorScored by
CVSS 3.1HIGH 7.8CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HLinux
CVSS 3.1HIGH 7.8CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HNVD · 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67 (Secondary)
CVSS 3.1MEDIUM 5.5CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HNVD · nvd@nist.gov (Primary)

European references

CERT-FR advisories

Affected configurations (NVD CPE)

Affected products

ProductVersions
Linux · Linuxaffected 06be6b149f7e406bcf16098567f5a6c9f042bced < 905ef207d5ed99ca64adfe39fba9ac46e434327a ; affected 06be6b149f7e406bcf16098567f5a6c9f042bced < 5ef8ca1c164786da24169af155c1ca1ff1353cf8 ; affected 06be6b149f7e406bcf16098567f5a6c9f042bced < 9a779d1f480e83720b5384adf165604e7ee226bd ; affected 06be6b149f7e406bcf16098567f5a6c9f042bced < f77b51bcee7be2bb686b5f7a2d4a1921e4bdb9f4 ; affected 06be6b149f7e406bcf16098567f5a6c9f042bced < 3b4d27acafaeab478fd24f79ad6e593a892828b9 ; affected 06be6b149f7e406bcf16098567f5a6c9f042bced < 06e769dddcbeb3baf2ce346273b53dd61fdbecf4
Linux · Linuxaffected 3.13 ; unaffected 0 < 3.13 ; unaffected 5.10.258 ≤ 5.10.* ; unaffected 5.15.209 ≤ 5.15.* ; unaffected 6.1.175 ≤ 6.1.* ; unaffected 6.6.136 ≤ 6.6.*

Sources

SourceLicence
CVE List (CVEProject cvelistV5)CVE Program Terms of Use
EPSS (FIRST.org)FIRST — attribution requested
ENISA EUVDENISA — reproduction authorised, source acknowledged
CERT-FR (ANSSI)Licence Ouverte / Etalab 2.0
NVD (NIST) via fkie-cad/nvd-json-data-feedsPublic domain — this product uses data from the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD