CVE-2026-98348 wifi: libipw: reject too-short association responses
A buffer overflow in the Linux kernel libipw Wi-Fi driver allows attackers to read past receive buffers via malformed association responses, potentially causing crashes or code execution.
- 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-2026-98348?
CVE-2026-98348 is a high-severity 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: libipw: reject too-short association responses
libipw_handle_assoc_resp() reads the capability, status and aid fields of the 30-byte association response prefix and then computes the information element length as
stats->len - sizeof(*frame)
stats->len is a u16 and sizeof() has type size_t, so the subtraction is evaluated as size_t and wraps instead of going negative. Truncating that to the u16 length parameter of libipw_parse_info_param() turns a frame shorter than the fixed fields into a length near 64 KiB, and the parser then reads past the receive buffer.
Both the ipw2100 and ipw2200 management receive paths reach this function having established only that the frame carries the generic 24-byte three-address header.
Reject the frame before any fixed field is touched.
Found by an AI-assisted review of length arithmetic in management frame parsers. Verified with a KUnit case under Generic KASAN on arm64 under QEMU; I do not have the hardware, so it is not tested on a real device.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-98348?
How do I fix CVE-2026-98348?
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-2026-98348 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-98348 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as AZL-106086, BELL-CVE-2026-98348, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-98348, GHSA-jch8-34rh-p8cm, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-98348.