CVE-2026-64175

wifi: iwlwifi: mld: stop TX during firmware restart

State
Published
Severity
7.5 High
Published
Jul 19, 2026
Updated
Oct 19, 2026
Reserved
Jul 19, 2026

Read the record on cve.org

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

wifi: iwlwifi: mld: stop TX during firmware restart

When iwlwifi firmware crashes (e.g., NMI_INTERRUPT_UNKNOWN on Intel BE201/Wi-Fi 7), iwl_mld_nic_error() sets mld->fw_status.in_hw_restart to true. However, iwl_mld_tx_from_txq() does not check this flag before dequeuing frames from mac80211 and pushing them to the transport layer.

Since the firmware is dead, iwl_trans_tx() returns -EIO for each frame, which then gets freed immediately. Under high-throughput conditions (e.g., Tailscale UDP traffic or active SSH sessions), this creates a tight dequeue-send-fail-free loop that wastes CPU cycles and generates rapid skb allocation churn, leading to memory pressure from slab fragmentation.

The RX path already has this guard (iwl_mld_rx_mpdu checks in_hw_restart at rx.c:1906), and so does the TXQ allocation worker (iwl_mld_add_txqs_wk at tx.c:156). Add the same guard to iwl_mld_tx_from_txq() to stop all TX during firmware restart.

Frames left in mac80211's TXQs are naturally drained after restart completes, when queue reallocation triggers iwl_mld_tx_from_txq() via iwl_mld_add_txq_list(), or when new upper-layer traffic invokes wake_tx_queue.

Tested on ASUS Zenbook 14 UX3405CA with Intel BE201 (Wi-Fi 7) on kernel 6.19.5 where the firmware crashes approximately every 10-15 minutes under Tailscale traffic.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
3.17.5 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HLinux

Weaknesses

  • CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

Affected Products

ProductVersions
LinuxLinux
  • d1e879ec600f9b3bdd253167533959facfefb17b to before dc31c69476520bb4c2a208211a8d3c310a62c4d0Affected
  • d1e879ec600f9b3bdd253167533959facfefb17b to before 13f1786395dbbf3df73337063c798f1266be6151Affected
  • d1e879ec600f9b3bdd253167533959facfefb17b to before 2becb38a3e217ef2b2f42fddd7db7a25905ec291Affected
LinuxLinux
  • 6.15Affected
  • before 6.15Not affected
  • 6.18.34 through 6.18.*Not affected
  • 7.0.11 through 7.0.*Not affected
  • 7.1 and laterNot affected

References

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