What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2009-2844

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v2.0)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 3.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2009-08-18 · updated 2026-06-16
• Weakness: CWE-399

Description

cfg80211 in net/wireless/scan.c in the Linux kernel 2.6.30-rc1 and other versions before 2.6.31-rc6 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) via a sequence of beacon frames in which one frame omits an SSID Information Element (IE) and the subsequent frame contains an SSID IE, which triggers a NULL pointer dereference in the cmp_ies function. NOTE: a potential weakness in the is_mesh function was also addressed, but the relevant condition did not exist in the code, so it is not a vulnerability.

Affected products

• Linux Kernel: 2.6.24.7, 2.6.25.15
• Linux kernel: through 2.6.16.31; 2.6, 2.6.0, 2.6.1, 2.6.10, 2.6.11, 2.6.11.1 (+70)

References

• http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git%3Ba=commitdiff%3Bh=cd3468bad96c00b5a512f551674f36776129520e
• http://jon.oberheide.org/files/cfg80211-remote-dos.c
• http://secunia.com/advisories/36278
• http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/ChangeLog-2.6.30.5
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2009/08/17/1
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2009/08/17/2
• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/36052
• http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git%3Ba=commitdiff%3Bh=cd3468bad96c00b5a512f551674f36776129520e
• http://jon.oberheide.org/files/cfg80211-remote-dos.c
• http://secunia.com/advisories/36278
• http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/ChangeLog-2.6.30.5
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2009/08/17/1

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