CVE-2026-98824 wifi: mac80211: validate TX status rate metadata
Malformed Wi-Fi TX status metadata can cause out-of-bounds indexing in the Linux kernel, potentially leading to memory corruption or denial of service.
- 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-2026-98824?
CVE-2026-98824 is a memory corruption vulnerability in Linux, published on 18 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: mac80211: validate TX status rate metadata
minstrel_ht_tx_status() converts the HT/VHT rate reported in a TX status into a group and rate index and uses those to index the minstrel_ht rate tables. The existing validation only checked that an entry was present and had tries recorded; it did not check that the reported MCS, spatial stream count and bandwidth are representable by the tables, so malformed metadata passed to minstrel_ht_get_stats() or minstrel_ht_ri_get_stats() could be used as an out-of-bounds index.
Validate the rate metadata in the common TX status path instead of only in minstrel_ht, since the values are used by more than rate control. The legacy ieee80211_tx_rate array and the rate_info based entries are sanitized in ieee80211_tx_status_ext() and ieee80211_tx_rate_update() before any consumer runs: an entry that does not describe a valid rate for its encoding is dropped. minstrel_ht keeps the checks that depend on its own tables, i.e. the supported number of spatial streams, the MCS group size and the supported bandwidths.
This does not take away the driver's responsibility to report sane values, it only prevents a single bad report from corrupting mac80211 state. No WARN_ON() is added: with panic_on_warn a driver bug would otherwise turn into a denial of service.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-98824?
How do I fix CVE-2026-98824?
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-2026-98824 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-98824 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as AZL-109313, BELL-CVE-2026-98824, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-98824, GHSA-x3j6-9gf8-hfpp, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-98824.