What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-98183: wifi: mac80211: avoid out-of-bounds read for empty PREQ elements

• Severity: unknown
• 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: 2026-10-06 · updated 2026-10-19

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: wifi: mac80211: avoid out-of-bounds read for empty PREQ elements ieee80211_mesh_preq_size_ok() derives the location of the PREQ bottom fields before checking whether the element contains even the fixed header. ieee80211_mesh_hwmp_preq_get_bottom() reads the flags byte to account for the optional Address Extension field. Consequently, an empty PREQ element causes a one-byte read beyond its declared payload. Move the helper call after both size checks, so the bottom fields are only accessed when they are present.

Affected products

• Linux kernel: 7.2 — fixed in 7.3

How to fix

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

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3beddbd56946577478fd5e649f556aaaebe15b0a
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e6031f02269c0f51cf67886d177f02bc300b47cd

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