CVE-2026-98307 wifi: ath11k: cleanup arsta in ath11k_mac_peer_cleanup_all()
A memory leak in the ath11k WiFi driver can lead to resource exhaustion and denial of service when firmware crashes occur.
- 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-2026-98307?
CVE-2026-98307 is a memory corruption vulnerability in Linux, published on 6 Oct 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: ath11k: cleanup arsta in ath11k_mac_peer_cleanup_all()
When mac80211 removes a sta, it calls .sta_state() which in turn calls ath11k_mac_station_remove(). In that function we clean up both peers & arsta related resources.
But when the firmware crashes, ath11k calls ieee80211_restart_hw(), which assumes that all driver related resources are cleaned up beforehand. This cleanup is supposedly done by ath11k_mac_peer_cleanup_all() but does not in fact free arsta->rx_stats / tx_stats.
Extract the arsta cleanup from ath11k_mac_station_remove() into a new ath11k_mac_station_cleanup() and call it from both there and ath11k_mac_peer_cleanup_all().
This should handle kmemleaks reports like: unreferenced object 0xffffff801ae66400 (size 1024): comm "hostapd", pid 1306, jiffies 4295011565 hex dump (first 32 bytes): 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ backtrace (crc d61c08ec): kmemleak_alloc+0x3c/0x50 __kmalloc_cache_noprof+0x2b0/0x3e0 ath11k_mac_op_sta_state+0x1dc/0xb10 drv_sta_state+0xac/0x6f8 sta_info_insert_rcu+0x314/0x5e0 sta_info_insert+0x14/0x38 ieee80211_add_station+0x10c/0x1a0 nl80211_new_station+0x3e8/0x680 genl_family_rcv_msg_doit+0xc0/0x120 genl_rcv_msg+0x1b4/0x258 netlink_rcv_skb+0x4c/0x108 genl_rcv+0x38/0x60 netlink_unicast+0x190/0x278 netlink_sendmsg+0x15c/0x370 ____sys_sendmsg+0x120/0x290 ___sys_sendmsg+0x70/0xa0
Tested-on: QCN9074 hw1.0 PCI WLAN.HK.2.9.0.1-01977-QCAHKSWPL_SILICONZ-1
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-98307?
How do I fix CVE-2026-98307?
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-2026-98307 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-98307 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as AZL-106227, BELL-CVE-2026-98307, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-98307, GHSA-79xr-q5vm-65jg, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-98307.