CVE-2026-98349 wifi: libipw: reject too-short beacon and probe responses
An integer overflow in the Linux kernel libipw driver allows out-of-bounds reads when processing short beacon frames, potentially causing crashes or data leaks.
- 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-2026-98349?
CVE-2026-98349 is a high-severity 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 beacon and probe responses
libipw_process_probe_response() and the libipw_network_init() call it makes assume the frame contains the full 36-byte beacon and probe response prefix, but the ipw2100 and ipw2200 receive paths only establish that a management frame carries the generic 24-byte three-address header.
libipw_network_init() then computes the information element length as
stats->len - sizeof(*beacon)
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() yields 65524 for a 24-byte beacon, and the parser then walks the receive buffer as if it held almost 64 KiB of information elements, reading past the allocation.
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-2026-98349?
How do I fix CVE-2026-98349?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Is CVE-2026-98349 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-98349 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as AZL-106302, BELL-CVE-2026-98349, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-98349, GHSA-pp5x-p5cv-w76c, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-98349.