CVE-2022-50533 wifi: mac80211: mlme: fix null-ptr deref on failed assoc

What is CVE-2022-50533?

CVE-2022-50533 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 7 Oct 2025. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

wifi: mac80211: mlme: fix null-ptr deref on failed assoc

If association to an AP without a link 0 fails, then we crash in tracing because it assumes that either ap_mld_addr or link 0 BSS is valid, since we clear sdata->vif.valid_links and then don't add the ap_mld_addr to the struct.

Since we clear also sdata->vif.cfg.ap_addr, keep a local copy of it and assign it earlier, before clearing valid_links, to fix this.

Weakness: CWE-476

Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-50533?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2022-50533?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2022-50533 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-50533 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

• CVE-2026-53266 Linux Kernel Out-of-Bounds Write Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2013-6282 Linux Kernel Improper Input Validation Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2022-0185 Linux Kernel Heap-Based Buffer Overflow Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2013-2094 Linux Kernel Privilege Escalation Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2026-53362 Linux Kernel Unspecified Exploited High 7.8

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2022-50533, GHSA-q5wr-hr4c-4mfv, UBUNTU-CVE-2022-50533.