CVE-2026-98829 wifi: mac80211: drop oversized fragments to avoid extra_len overflow

What is CVE-2026-98829?

CVE-2026-98829 is a 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: drop oversized fragments to avoid extra_len overflow

In ieee80211_rx_h_defragment(), fragment payloads are accumulated into entry->extra_len as subsequent fragments arrive:

entry->extra_len += rx->skb->len;

When the final fragment arrives, the head fragment is dequeued, and pskb_expand_head() is called with entry->extra_len to ensure sufficient tailroom for all queued fragments before copying:

if (skb_tailroom(rx->skb) < entry->extra_len) { if (unlikely(pskb_expand_head(rx->skb, 0, entry->extra_len, GFP_ATOMIC))) { ... } } while ((skb = __skb_dequeue(&entry->skb_list))) { skb_put_data(rx->skb, skb->data, skb->len); dev_kfree_skb(skb); }

In commit 69f132236827 ("mac80211: shrink struct ieee80211_fragment_entry"), entry->extra_len was narrowed from unsigned int to u16 in order to reduce structure memory footprint.

However, an IEEE 802.11 frame sequence can contain up to 16 fragments (frag numbers 0..15). If a sequence of large fragments arrives (e.g. from a malicious peer or rogue AP), the sum of fragment lengths can exceed 65535 bytes (for example, 15 fragments of 4400 bytes total 66000 bytes). Because extra_len is a u16, this addition overflows and wraps around modulo 65536 (e.g. 66000 wraps to 464).

Consequently, pskb_expand_head() allocates only the truncated amount of tailroom (or is skipped entirely if the head fragment already has >= 464 bytes of tailroom). When skb_put_data() subsequently iterates through the queued skb list, it appends the full payload into the undersized buffer, causing skb_put() to trigger skb_over_panic() and crash the kernel in softirq context.

A legitimate MSDU in IEEE 802.11 is at most 2304 bytes (or up to 7935/11454 bytes for A-MSDU, which is not fragmented), well below U16_MAX.

Fix this without increasing the size of struct ieee80211_fragment_entry by checking whether adding the incoming fragment length would exceed U16_MAX. If so, purge the queued fragments and drop the frame.

[assign a separate drop reason]

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-98829?

How do I fix CVE-2026-98829?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2026-98829 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-98829 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as AZL-109343, BELL-CVE-2026-98829, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-98829, GHSA-8w97-qwf2-rgh5, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-98829.