CVE-2026-90016: staging: rtl8723bs: fix OOB read in rtw_restruct_wmm_ie()

Severity: high (CVSS 7.1 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-09-16 · updated 2026-10-30

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: staging: rtl8723bs: fix OOB read in rtw_restruct_wmm_ie() rtw_restruct_wmm_ie() scans in_ie for a WMM IE with: while (i < in_len) { ... if (i + 5 < in_len && in_ie[i] == 0xDD && ...) { ... break; } i += (in_ie[i + 1] + 2); /* to the next IE element */ } When the "i + 5 < in_len" match check fails simply because i is within 5 bytes of the end of the buffer (i.e. no WMM IE was found near the tail of in_ie), execution falls through to "i += (in_ie[i + 1] + 2)", which reads in_ie[i + 1]. If i == in_len - 1 at that point, this is a 1-byte out-of-bounds read of an attacker-influenced IE buffer built from association/scan data. Commit a75281626fc8f ("staging: rtl8723bs: fix potential out-of-bounds read in rtw_restruct_wmm_ie") added the "i + 5 < in_len" guard to the match condition itself, but did not add an equivalent guard before the fallthrough advance, so the same class of OOB read remained reachable through the non-matching path. Add an explicit bounds check before advancing to the next IE.

Affected products

Linux: 4.12 — fixed in 7.3

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux 7.3. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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