CVE-2024-53191: wifi: ath12k: fix warning when unbinding

Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2024-12-27 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-415

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: wifi: ath12k: fix warning when unbinding If there is an error during some initialization related to firmware, the buffers dp->tx_ring[i].tx_status are released. However this is released again when the device is unbinded (ath12k_pci), and we get: WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 2098 at mm/slub.c:4689 free_large_kmalloc+0x4d/0x80 Call Trace: free_large_kmalloc ath12k_dp_free ath12k_core_deinit ath12k_pci_remove ... The issue is always reproducible from a VM because the MSI addressing initialization is failing. In order to fix the issue, just set the buffers to NULL after releasing in order to avoid the double free.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 6.3 before 6.6.64; from 6.7 before 6.11.11; from 6.12 before 6.12.2 — fixed in 6.11.11, 6.12.2, 6.6.64

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.11.11, 6.12.2, 6.6.64. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

Get alerted when CVE-2024-53191 or the next vulnerability affects your stack