CVE-2026-90016 staging: rtl8723bs: fix OOB read in rtw_restruct_wmm_ie()

Q: Is CVE-2026-90016 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-90016 in the wild and no public exploit code.

High 7.1 Published 16 Sep 2026 Updated 21 Oct 2026

An out-of-bounds read in the rtl8723bs Wi-Fi driver allows attackers to leak kernel memory or cause a system crash via crafted wireless frames.

Exploited in the wild: Not known
Login needed: Not needed
Attackable: Local or same network only
Victim action needed: Not needed
Fix: Available

What is CVE-2026-90016?

CVE-2026-90016 is a high-severity memory corruption vulnerability in Linux, published on 16 Sep 2026. 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:

staging: rtl8723bs: fix OOB read in rtw_restruct_wmm_ie()

rtw_restruct_wmm_ie() scans in_ie for a WMM IE with:

while (i < in_len) { ... if (i + 5 < in_len && in_ie[i] == 0xDD && ...) { ... break; } i += (in_ie[i + 1] + 2); /* to the next IE element */ }

When the "i + 5 < in_len" match check fails simply because i is within 5 bytes of the end of the buffer (i.e. no WMM IE was found near the tail of in_ie), execution falls through to "i += (in_ie[i + 1] + 2)", which reads in_ie[i + 1]. If i == in_len - 1 at that point, this is a 1-byte out-of-bounds read of an attacker-influenced IE buffer built from association/scan data.

Commit a75281626fc8f ("staging: rtl8723bs: fix potential out-of-bounds read in rtw_restruct_wmm_ie") added the "i + 5 < in_len" guard to the match condition itself, but did not add an equivalent guard before the fallthrough advance, so the same class of OOB read remained reachable through the non-matching path.

Add an explicit bounds check before advancing to the next IE.

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-90016?

How do I fix CVE-2026-90016?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Upgrade to the fixed version. Memory-safe languages, compiler hardening and fuzzing prevent most new cases. More about Memory corruption.

Is CVE-2026-90016 being exploited?