CVE-2026-98340: wifi: cfg80211: only group hidden BSSes with beacon entries

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: cfg80211: only group hidden BSSes with beacon entries When a probe response for an unknown BSS comes in, __cfg80211_bss_update() looks for an existing entry with the same BSSID and a hidden (zero-length or NUL-filled) SSID, and if it finds one it groups them, using the beacon IEs from the existing entry. But that could find another entry without a beacon, if it was also from a probe response (with SSID), so there's a group without beacon elements. If a beacon with a hidden SSID for that BSSID arrives later, cfg80211_combine_bsses() goes looking for the probe response entries that belong to it - i.e. entries with the same BSSID and channel that have no beacon IEs - and finds those two. They are already grouped with each other, so it hits its WARN_ON_ONCE(bss->pub.hidden_beacon_bss) WARN_ON_ONCE(!list_empty(&bss->hidden_list)) which are there because an entry without beacon elements is not supposed to be part of a group yet. Only combine entries when a beacon was already received, ones that are kept separate will be combined when a beacon arrives.

Affected products

Linux kernel: 3.9 — fixed in 7.3

How to fix

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

References

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