# CVE-2026-97518: wifi: cfg80211: reject duplicate wiphy cipher suite entries

> A local attacker can trigger a buffer overflow in the Linux kernel WiFi subsystem by providing duplicate cipher suite entries, causing a denial of service.

- **Severity:** Not scored
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Any signed-in user
- **Attackable:** Local or same network only
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** Yes
- **Published:** 24 Sep 2026
- **Updated:** 21 Oct 2026
- **Also known as:** AZL-103592, BELL-CVE-2026-97518, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-97518, GHSA-q434-f3vh-rmc4, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-97518

## What is CVE-2026-97518?

CVE-2026-97518 is a vulnerability in Linux, published on 24 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:

wifi: cfg80211: reject duplicate wiphy cipher suite entries

Duplicate entries in wiphy->cipher_suites do not describe any
additional capability, but cfg80211 currently accepts them and leaves
individual consumers to deal with them.

One such consumer is the WEXT compatibility code, which appends a WEP
key length for each WEP cipher entry it sees. Repeated WEP entries can
therefore overflow the fixed iw_range::encoding_size array returned by
SIOCGIWRANGE.

Reject duplicate cipher suite entries in wiphy_register() instead.
This keeps the cipher suite invariant in one place and makes malformed
wiphy descriptions fail early with -EINVAL, rather than relying on a
single cfg80211 user to handle duplicates correctly.

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-97518?


## How do I fix CVE-2026-97518?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2026-97518 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-97518 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2026-97518 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2026-97518 is a vulnerability in Linux, published on 24 Sep 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-97518 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Linux. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-97518/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-97518/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-97518
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-97518
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2026-97518

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-97518/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.