Riskcovery

CVE-2026-98182

wifi: mac80211: refuse to make a monitor active when it has no queue

State
Published
Severity
Not scored
Published
Oct 6, 2026
Updated
Oct 19, 2026
Reserved
Sep 25, 2026

Read the record on cve.org

Description

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

wifi: mac80211: refuse to make a monitor active when it has no queue

A monitor interface only gets a TXQ if it's created active, and one can't be added later. Setting the flag on a down interface is still allowed, so the driver is handed a monitor with no queue. ath9k dereferences it:

BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000066 RIP: 0010:ath_tx_node_init+0x49/0x170 [ath9k] ath9k_add_interface+0x10c/0x140 [ath9k] drv_add_interface+0x54/0x250 [mac80211] ieee80211_do_open+0x32f/0x800 [mac80211]

Reached with CAP_NET_ADMIN by "iw dev X set monitor active" followed by "ip link set X up". RTNL is held, so netlink operations block behind it.

Refuse the flag when there is no queue to give.

Scores

The record has no CVSS score.

Weaknesses

The record names no weakness.

Affected Products

ProductVersions
LinuxLinux
  • 79af1f866193de29e65a4dba7d0dab14b0c0ff93 to before b7b7d46ec4fa127767931938b282c361c0519af6Affected
  • 79af1f866193de29e65a4dba7d0dab14b0c0ff93 to before abe15e643e576459469867758ae9c586a7bab95dAffected
  • 79af1f866193de29e65a4dba7d0dab14b0c0ff93 to before 46c223468537a05a404699771cd3e68532dab5e6Affected
  • 79af1f866193de29e65a4dba7d0dab14b0c0ff93 to before 2b04d6556964ae9f89819b86a0a7801e39c3aae5Affected
LinuxLinux
  • 4.15Affected
  • before 4.15Not affected
  • 6.12.112 through 6.12.*Not affected
  • 6.18.54 through 6.18.*Not affected
  • 7.2.8 through 7.2.*Not affected
  • 7.3 and laterNot affected

References

Every record here comes from the CVE Program’s CVE List. © 1999–2026 The MITRE Corporation. CVE is a registered trademark of The MITRE Corporation. The records are reproduced under the CVE Program terms of use.