[CVE-2026-98186][MODERATE REGULAR] wifi: mwifiex: bound the pairwise-cipher OUI walk to the IE length

[CVE-2026-98186][MODERATE REGULAR] wifi: mwifiex: bound the pairwise-cipher OUI walk to the IE length

[AL-KERNEL]

CVE: CVE-2026-98186
Priority: MODERATE REGULAR
AL-KERNEL base severity: MODERATE
KPANIC flag: NO
Patch: wifi: mwifiex: bound the pairwise-cipher OUI walk to the IE length
Commit: 77e642af7f2f6029e12a35c847c56cbd0466e799
Upstream patch: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=77e642af7f2f6029e12a35c847c56cbd0466e799
Original CVE announcement: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-98186
Analysis date: Thu, 08 Oct 2026 11:31:36 -0400
ActionableScore: 3
ActionableScore lower bound: 2
Actionable bucket: Borderline / manual review recommended
Manual review required: YES

Summary:
No one-sentence report phrase was found.

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

The original Linux kernel CVE announcement for CVE-2026-98186 is available here:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-98186

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: MODERATE REGULAR
Manual review required: YES

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

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

CVE-2026-98186	MODERATE	https://www.kernelcve.org/list/?q=CVE-2026-98186 CHECK WITH IMPACT FROM ORIG NN MODERATE | AEGIS IMPACT MODERATE_KPANIC AEGIS_AS=3 LEGACY=MODERATE RESULT=DIFF (legacy and Aegis reconciliation differ; DECISION: legacy MODERATE vs Aegis MODERATE_KPANIC)	Maybe valid. Check manually. Hints by AL-KERNEL: The best (paranoid) CVSS is 'AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:L';CWE-125;*CWE-20;CWE-125;Other CVSS 'AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L';BEST CVSS score: '5.4';DESCR 'An out-of-bounds read in the Marvell mwifiex Wi-Fi driver occurs because mwifiex_search_oui_in_ie reads a pairwise cipher count from an attacker controlled RSN or WPA information element without ensuring that the claimed OUI list fits within the element length. A nearby attacker operating a malicious access point or transmitting crafted beacon or probe response frames can trigger parsing of the malformed element during scan result processing. For the CVSS the PR:N because no local account or code execution on the target is required. The attacker must be within Wi-Fi radio range of a system using the affected mwifiex driver. The base impact is limited to availability because the patch demonstrates an out-of-bounds read and does not show a write primitive or reliable data disclosure. For the paranoid score limited confidentiality impact is retained because attacker controlled comparisons can access data beyond the intended element boundary. No privilege escalation is demonstrated. Wireless reachability and the memory safety bug justify manual review.';YES REQUIRES MANUAL CHECK; ,and ActionableScore result is Borderline / manual review recommended (with actual score 3)	MAYBE	REMOTE OOB NETWORK  DECREASED_TO_MODERATEREG_BASED_ON_ACTIONABLESCORELESSTHAN4	-	-	checked

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

ActionableScore=3
ActionableScoreLower=2
PrimitiveClass=CLASS_C
RealUAF=NO
HostAdminRequired=NO
NamespaceScopedPrivilege=UNKNOWN
ImportantCandidate=NO
ManualReview=RECOMMENDED
AutoDowngradeAllowed=YES

1. ActionableScore

* Raw conservative score: 2
* Conservative score: 2
* Raw paranoid score: 3
* Paranoid score: 3
* Final recommended bucket: **Borderline / manual review recommended**::

No floor or cap was applied.

2. Signal breakdown

* +2 Directly network-triggerable adjacent wireless input. A nearby malicious AP or transmitter can provide crafted beacon or probe-response RSN or WPA information elements during scan-result parsing. This is attacker-controlled wireless traffic, not a privileged local control-plane operation.
* +1 Paranoid availability concern. The malformed pairwise-cipher count can cause repeated memcmp reads up to approximately 1020 bytes beyond the declared information-element boundary. Depending on placement near the end of the kmemdup beacon allocation, this can plausibly produce an invalid kernel read or parser fault. A reliable crash is not demonstrated, so this point is paranoid only.

Important non-awarded signals:

* No UAF, stale object, refcount misuse, double release, or lifetime mutation is established.
* No out-of-bounds write, arbitrary write, controlled reclaim, callback influence, or type confusion is established.
* No confidentiality point is awarded. The OOB access is only used for internal OUI comparisons, and no kernel bytes are copied back to the attacker or otherwise disclosed.
* No integrity point is awarded. The patch shows a read-only bounds violation and no attacker-controlled modification of kernel state.
* No privilege escalation point is awarded. A read-only parser overrun alone does not establish an LPE mechanism.
* No reliable kernel crash point is awarded in the conservative score. The patch prevents an invalid read but does not document an observed panic, Oops, or deterministic denial of service.
* No special hardware, host-admin, race, or niche-subsystem penalty is applied. The affected mwifiex Wi-Fi driver is hardware-specific, but hardware specificity alone is not evidence of rare physical-only reachability.

3. Reachability analysis

The triggering attacker is a nearby wireless attacker, such as a malicious access point or a device transmitting crafted beacon or probe-response management frames. The vulnerable path is reached when a system using the affected Marvell mwifiex driver scans for or processes visible Wi-Fi networks.

No local account, local code execution, CAP_NET_ADMIN, host root, or administrative configuration by the attacker is required after the affected Wi-Fi interface is active and scanning. Therefore HostAdminRequired is NO.

This is adjacent-network reachability rather than Internet reachability. The attacker must be within Wi-Fi radio range and the target must use the affected mwifiex hardware and driver. Namespace-scoped privilege is not relevant to the complete trigger chain and is marked UNKNOWN.

No race, special timing, firmware compromise, prior attacker-controlled host setup, or attacker-controlled allocator reuse is established by the supplied patch.

4. Primitive and severity interpretation

The exact primitive is an attacker-controlled bounded out-of-bounds read in mwifiex_search_oui_in_ie. The pairwise cipher count is read from a malformed RSN or WPA information element and is used to walk four-byte OUI entries without checking that the claimed list fits within the actual IE length.

This is not an active-object lifetime bug and not a UAF. It is not a write primitive. The affected memory is the kmemdup beacon buffer and the supplied evidence establishes only reads beyond the intended information-element boundary.

The practical demonstrated consequence is malformed scan-result parsing with invalid kernel memory reads. A kernel fault or limited denial of service is plausible if the walk crosses the allocation boundary, but it is not explicitly demonstrated as reliable. Confidentiality, integrity, privilege escalation, controlled kernel disclosure, and arbitrary read capability remain speculative and are not scored.

PrimitiveClass is CLASS_C because the established behavior is an invalid read and possible DoS-class parser failure without an independently useful corruption primitive. ImportantCandidate is NO because no meaningful exploitation leverage beyond the invalid read is established. AutoDowngradeAllowed is YES because there is no UAF, write, disclosure path, boundary bypass, or unresolved post-lifetime corruption mechanism.

Likely operational severity is ordinary Moderate to Low-like in environments using affected mwifiex hardware, but manual validation is appropriate because the attacker input is received over the wireless network without local privileges.

5. One-sentence report phrase

A nearby malicious Wi-Fi access point can send a malformed RSN or WPA information element that causes the mwifiex driver to read beyond the declared OUI list during scan parsing, potentially causing a limited denial of service but with no demonstrated information disclosure, write primitive, or privilege escalation.

6. Manual review recommendation

MANUAL CHECK RECOMMENDED

The bug is externally attacker-triggerable over adjacent Wi-Fi and reaches a kernel out-of-bounds read, but the supplied patch does not establish a disclosure, write, reliable crash, or privilege-escalation primitive.

7. Call-site confidence

Call-site confidence: medium

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

Patch: wifi: mwifiex: bound the pairwise-cipher OUI walk to the IE length
Commit: 77e642af7f2f6029e12a35c847c56cbd0466e799
Upstream URL: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=77e642af7f2f6029e12a35c847c56cbd0466e799

Commit description:

mwifiex_search_oui_in_ie() reads a pairwise-cipher (PTK) count from a
beacon/probe-response RSN or WPA information element and then walks that
many 4-byte OUIs, comparing each with memcmp(). The count comes straight
from the (attacker-supplied) IE and is never checked against the
element's own length, and the callers admit the element on element_id
alone (has_ieee_hdr() / has_vendor_hdr(), no length check). A crafted
RSN/WPA IE with a large pairwise count therefore makes the walk read up
to 255 * 4 bytes past the element -- an out-of-bounds read of the
kmemdup()'d beacon buffer, reachable from any AP whose beacon/probe
response is processed during scan-result parsing.

Pass the number of IE bytes available at the OUI list and bound the walk
to the element. Keep the length signed and reject a negative value
before any unsigned arithmetic, so a small or zero IE length cannot
underflow to a large size_t and defeat the bound.

Found by 0sec automated security-research tooling ( https://0sec.ai ).

Fixes: 5e6e3a9 ("wireless: mwifiex: initial commit for Marvell mwifiex driver")
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
Assisted-by: 0sec:multi-model
Signed-off-by: Doruk Tan Ozturk <doruk@0sec.ai>
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260814134704.85902-1-doruk@0sec.ai
Signed-off-by: Johannes Berg <johannes.berg@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>

Changed files:
  drivers/net/wireless/marvell/mwifiex/scan.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=77e642af7f2f6029e12a35c847c56cbd0466e799

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

The original Linux kernel CVE announcement for CVE-2026-98186 can be found here:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-98186

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:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
  The Best / paranoid CVSS vector: AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:L
  The Best / paranoid CVSS score: 5.4

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: 2
  Paranoid ActionableScore: 3

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: MODERATE
KPANIC detected for this report: NO
Published priority for this report (same as in Subject): MODERATE REGULAR

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).