What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2025-38642: wifi: mac80211: fix WARN_ON for monitor mode on some devices

• Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 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: 2025-08-22 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-617

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: wifi: mac80211: fix WARN_ON for monitor mode on some devices On devices without WANT_MONITOR_VIF (and probably without channel context support) we get a WARN_ON for changing the per-link setting of a monitor interface. Since we already skip AP_VLAN interfaces and MONITOR with WANT_MONITOR_VIF and/or NO_VIRTUAL_MONITOR should update the settings, catch this in the link change code instead of the warning.

Affected products

• Linux kernel: from 6.13 before 6.15.10; from 6.16 before 6.16.1 — fixed in 6.15.10, 6.16.1

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.15.10, 6.16.1. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/1e10ded6b0f9b0eeefaacbb6c6c6afff3f702812
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c57e5b9819dfd16d709bcd6cb633301ed0829a66
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ff15498ebaa49c5429a74e70a1951dede60cd14c

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