[CVE-2026-97492][LOW] wifi: mac80211: don't call ieee80211_handle_reconfig_failure when not needed [ Upstream

[CVE-2026-97492][LOW] wifi: mac80211: don't call ieee80211_handle_reconfig_failure when not needed [ Upstream

[AL-KERNEL]

CVE: CVE-2026-97492
Priority: LOW
AL-KERNEL base severity: LOW
KPANIC flag: NO
Patch: wifi: mac80211: don't call ieee80211_handle_reconfig_failure when not needed [ Upstream
Commit: 60b96e44489d6775fe9cd8df619c29e0dc285c49
Upstream patch: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=60b96e44489d6775fe9cd8df619c29e0dc285c49
Original CVE announcement: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-97492
Analysis date: Thu, 24 Sep 2026 19:20:50 -0400
ActionableScore: 1
ActionableScore lower bound: unknown
Actionable bucket: Ordinary Moderate
Manual review required: NO

Summary:
No one-sentence report phrase was found.

======================================================================
ABOUT THIS REPORT
======================================================================

The original Linux kernel CVE announcement for CVE-2026-97492 is available here:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-97492

The original announcement does not normally provide a security severity
estimate, CVSS assessment, or enough information to determine whether the
reported kernel bug represents a practically relevant security issue.

This report was generated by AL-KERNEL, an AI-assisted Linux kernel
vulnerability analysis system developed by Alexander Larkin. It combines
an autonomous classifier with LLM-assisted technical analysis and a
separate ActionableScore mechanism.

The purpose of this report is to prioritize Linux kernel CVEs before
manual review, identify cases that require prompt investigation, and
support automatic closure of issues that are unlikely to have meaningful
security impact.

Published priority for this report: LOW
Manual review required: NO

A detailed explanation of the methodology and priority rules is included
at the end of this message.

======================================================================
AL-KERNEL CLASSIFICATION RESULT
======================================================================

CVE-2026-97492	LOW	https://www.kernelcve.org/list/?q=CVE-2026-97492 CHECK WITH IMPACT FROM ORIG NN LOW	Maybe valid. Check manually. Hints by AL-KERNEL: The best (paranoid) CVSS is 'AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H';*CWE-416;*CWE-664;CWE-703;Other CVSS 'AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H';BEST CVSS score: '7';DESCR 'A mac80211 NAN reconfiguration failure can incorrectly mark all wireless interfaces as absent from the driver before cfg80211 destroys their state. Cleanup callbacks for other interfaces can then be skipped, leaving drivers such as iwlwifi with dangling pointers to freed station or link objects. A later driver access to stale state may cause a kernel crash and is a potential use after free condition. For the CVSS the PR:L vector is used because configuring NAN and wireless interfaces normally requires CAP_NET_ADMIN or equivalent delegated network administration rights. The issue is not directly network reachable because it is triggered through local wireless control plane reconfiguration rather than packet traffic. Impact is at least local denial of service through a possible kernel crash. In the paranoid assessment, confidentiality and integrity impact are considered because dangling pointers after object destruction require manual review for a practical use after free primitive.';YES REQUIRES MANUAL CHECK; ,and ActionableScore result is Ordinary Moderate (with actual score 1)	YES	REMOTE INIT ERRORPATH 	NO	NO	checked

======================================================================
ACTIONABLESCORE ANALYSIS
======================================================================

ActionableScore=1
PrimitiveClass=CLASS_C
RealUAF=NO
HostAdminRequired=UNKNOWN
NamespaceScopedPrivilege=UNKNOWN
ImportantCandidate=NO
ManualReview=RECOMMENDED
AutoDowngradeAllowed=YES

1. ActionableScore

* Raw conservative score: 1
* Conservative score: 1
* Raw paranoid score: 1
* Paranoid score: 1
* No floor or cap applied.
* Final recommended bucket: **Ordinary Moderate**::

2. Signal breakdown

* +1 Weak indirect lifetime corruption candidate. The patch establishes that driver-side pointers to station or link objects can remain after cfg80211 destroys those objects, because mac80211 incorrectly suppresses driver cleanup callbacks.
* No separate UAF +2 awarded. The supplied patch establishes dangling references, but does not show a later driver dereference, refcount mutation, release, callback dispatch, or other post-free consumption of the stale pointers.
* No reliable kernel crash or DoS point awarded. The commit does not provide an Oops, panic, warning trace caused by stale pointer use, or another demonstrated failure consequence.
* No remote reachability point awarded. The path is local mac80211 reconfiguration and not packet processing.
* No local unprivileged trigger point awarded. The supplied material does not establish that an ordinary unprivileged user can configure NAN and complete the required reconfiguration failure sequence.
* No host-admin privilege penalty awarded. Host-admin-equivalent privilege is not positively established by the visible call path.
* No controlled reclaim, object replacement, arbitrary write, callback influence, information disclosure, integrity impact, authorization bypass, or privilege escalation is demonstrated.
* No hard-race penalty awarded. The patch describes an ordered error and cleanup sequence, not a demonstrated narrow timing race.

3. Reachability analysis

The visible trigger requires a NAN interface reconfiguration failure while another interface such as a station interface exists. The problematic sequence is local wireless control-plane reconfiguration followed by interface shutdown, not attacker-controlled wireless packet traffic.

The supplied material does not show the relevant nl80211 capability checks, the namespace governing those checks, or whether NAN interface creation and reconfiguration are fully available to an attacker in a user-created network namespace. Therefore HostAdminRequired and NamespaceScopedPrivilege are UNKNOWN.

No special hardware, firmware compromise, boot parameter, sysctl prerequisite, or prior host setup is established by the supplied patch. NAN support and compatible wireless hardware are implied by the affected path, but the patch does not establish that these requirements are rare enough to justify a negative score.

4. Primitive and severity interpretation

The established primitive is an invalid driver lifecycle state. mac80211 can mark all interfaces as absent from the driver before cfg80211 destroys station and link objects. This can suppress normal driver removal callbacks and leave stale driver references after object destruction.

This is not yet a demonstrated real UAF under the supplied evidence. A dangling pointer exists, but no visible call site proves that iwlwifi or another driver later dereferences, modifies, releases, or traverses that exact stale pointer. The patch also does not establish controlled replacement, attacker-controlled post-free contents, repeated lifetime mutation, arbitrary read or write, callback use, disclosure, or privilege escalation.

The stale references concern active structured station and link objects, but object complexity alone is not sufficient to award structured stale-object exploitation leverage. The available evidence supports CLASS_C invalid-state behavior rather than CLASS_B real UAF or CLASS_A controlled corruption.

ImportantCandidate is NO because the current evidence does not establish post-lifetime consumption or meaningful exploitation leverage beyond an unresolved stale-pointer condition. AutoDowngradeAllowed is YES because no concrete UAF, repeated release, security-boundary bypass, or controlled corruption primitive is established. Manual review is still recommended because driver-specific cleanup paths, especially iwlwifi station and link removal paths, may reveal an actual later stale dereference not visible in this patch.

5. One-sentence report phrase

A failed NAN reconfiguration can suppress driver cleanup for other mac80211 interfaces and leave drivers with dangling station or link references, but the supplied patch does not establish a later stale-pointer dereference or an exploitable use-after-free primitive.

6. Manual review recommendation

MANUAL CHECK RECOMMENDED

Review affected driver cleanup and later station or link access paths to determine whether a retained pointer is subsequently dereferenced, released, or used after cfg80211_shutdown_all_interfaces destroys the referenced object.

7. Call-site confidence

Call-site confidence: low

======================================================================
UPSTREAM PATCH SUMMARY
======================================================================

Patch: wifi: mac80211: don't call ieee80211_handle_reconfig_failure when not needed [ Upstream
Commit: 60b96e44489d6775fe9cd8df619c29e0dc285c49
Upstream URL: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=60b96e44489d6775fe9cd8df619c29e0dc285c49

Changed files:
  net/mac80211/util.c

Diff excerpt:

Not included in this email. See the upstream URL for the full patch.

Full patch:
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=60b96e44489d6775fe9cd8df619c29e0dc285c49

======================================================================
DETAILED REPORT METHODOLOGY
======================================================================

The original Linux kernel CVE announcement for CVE-2026-97492 can be found here:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-97492

The original CVE announcement normally does not include a security-level
estimate. In particular, it may not contain a CVSS assessment, an impact
level, or enough information to determine whether the reported bug is a
practically relevant security issue. One purpose of this parallel CVE list
is to provide that missing technical and prioritization information.

The original goal of the AL-KERNEL project was to prioritize Linux kernel
CVE analysis automatically before manual review. The system can also help
identify non-security issues that may be suitable for automatic closure.

This report was generated by AL-KERNEL, an AI-assisted Linux kernel
vulnerability analysis system developed by Alexander Larkin.

The first analysis stage combines an autonomous classifier with additional
LLM-based analysis. The autonomous classifier runs locally on a CPU and is
based on a backpropagation neural network. Together, these mechanisms
produce a technical vulnerability description, identify likely weakness
types, estimate CVSS severity, and provide input for ActionableScore.

Two CVSS estimates are retained because incomplete kernel vulnerability
information often permits more than one defensible interpretation:

  Conservative CVSS vector: AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
  The Best / paranoid CVSS vector: AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
  The Best / paranoid CVSS score: 7

The conservative vector represents a lower-impact interpretation.
The Best/paranoid vector intentionally represents a plausible upper-bound
interpretation and should not automatically be treated as demonstrated
real-world impact.

CVSS may also need to be adjusted for a particular Linux deployment,
because actual reachability, privileges, enabled kernel configuration,
hardware, namespaces, exposed device nodes, and other environmental
conditions can differ significantly between systems.

A separate ActionableScore mechanism evaluates practical remediation
urgency. Its analysis may include reachability, attack prerequisites,
subsystem exposure, memory-corruption characteristics, denial-of-service
reliability, and possible confidentiality, integrity, or
privilege-escalation impact.

  Conservative ActionableScore: unknown
  Paranoid ActionableScore: 1

The final base severity is taken directly from the second tab-separated
field of the AL-KERNEL classification result. ActionableScore does not
replace or independently override that final AL-KERNEL decision, and
if ActionableScore adjusted impact level of ALKERNEL, then you would see
self-readable flags above like INCREASED_TO_HIGH_BASED_ON_ACTIONABLESCOREHIGHEREQTHAN7.

For an AL-KERNEL result of MODERATE, this report uses the following
additional presentation split:

  ActionableScore below 5   -> MODERATE REGULAR
  ActionableScore 5 or more -> MODERATE 7.0

The distinction between MODERATE REGULAR and MODERATE 7.0 makes it
possible to identify Moderate issues that should receive manual analysis
and fixes before lower-priority MODERATE REGULAR issues. In many cases,
MODERATE REGULAR fixes may wait for a later rebase or routine update.

There is one override in which MODERATE REGULAR becomes MODERATE 7.0
even when the ActionableScore is below 5. When the AL-KERNEL result
contains the KPANIC flag, a MODERATE result is always presented as
MODERATE 7.0. The KPANIC flag selected with few regexps without
usage of AI at all, so it helps to detect cases when Kernel Crash happens
and similar (to filter False-Negative results from the LLM usage).

KPANIC indicates that a reliable kernel crash, kernel panic, or similarly
serious kernel availability impact was identified by the classification
workflow.

AL-KERNEL base severity for this report: LOW
KPANIC detected for this report: NO
Published priority for this report (same as in Subject): LOW

These results are intended to support engineering triage. They are
machine-generated estimates, and cases marked for manual review should
be validated by a human security engineer before final disposition.
For more info read docs linked from here: https://kernelcve.org/
(and you can submit you own patch there to generate such a report
for non-existant CVE-id yet).

Note that in many cases this AI tool selects higher severity, than
real is (means you can expect Importants instead of Moderate 7.0 or
Moderates 7.0 instead of regular Moderates). If you see such cases,
please use reply email interface to add additional manual analyses
info to this particular CVE.
And please, please, let me know when you see Lows instead of Importants
or Important instead of Low (because particular for such cases I
need to tune this AI tool to make it better for this one and next similar).
My contact email for such notifications is alexanjelausa@gmail.com (and both
send reply to CVE record itself too and see "reply" button below for howto reply).