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CVE-2026-23444

wifi: mac80211: always free skb on ieee80211_tx_prepare_skb() failure

Published: 4/3/2026 Last updated: 6/1/2026 Reserved: 1/13/2026

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: wifi: mac80211: always free skb on ieee80211_tx_prepare_skb() failure ieee80211_tx_prepare_skb() has three error paths, but only two of them free the skb. The first error path (ieee80211_tx_prepare() returning TX_DROP) does not free it, while invoke_tx_handlers() failure and the fragmentation check both do. Add kfree_skb() to the first error path so all three are consistent, and remove the now-redundant frees in callers (ath9k, mt76, mac80211_hwsim) to avoid double-free. Document the skb ownership guarantee in the function's kdoc.

CNA assigner: Linux (416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67) Requested by: n/a

Metrics

Version Score Severity Vector String
3.1 7.8 High CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Opam packages affected (29)

albatross cdrom conf-bpftool conf-libbpf conf-linux-libc-dev core core_unix hvsock mirage-block-unix mm ocaml-probes ortools_solvers orun rawlink rawlink-eio rawlink-lwt restricted shell solo5 solo5-bindings-hvt solo5-bindings-spt solo5-cross-aarch64 solo5-kernel-ukvm tracy-client tuntap uring vhd-format vhd-format-lwt xapi-stdext-unix

Products affected (4)

Product Vendor Version
Linux Linux < 10.0.14393.8148
Linux Linux < 10.0.26100.6584
Linux Linux 10 Version 1709 for ARM64-based Systems
Linux Linux 6.0.5

References (16)