[CVE-2026-98325][LOW] wifi: mac80211: set up the TX info early to fix failure paths [ Upstream

[CVE-2026-98325][LOW] wifi: mac80211: set up the TX info early to fix failure paths [ Upstream

[AL-KERNEL]

CVE: CVE-2026-98325
Priority: LOW
AL-KERNEL base severity: LOW
KPANIC flag: NO
Patch: wifi: mac80211: set up the TX info early to fix failure paths [ Upstream
Commit: df711e9fa20d7e996711c7f43a11a71805bef78d
Upstream patch: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=df711e9fa20d7e996711c7f43a11a71805bef78d
Original CVE announcement: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-98325
Analysis date: Sat, 10 Oct 2026 04:42:50 -0400
ActionableScore: 0
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-2026-98325 is available here:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-98325

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-2026-98325	LOW	https://www.kernelcve.org/list/?q=CVE-2026-98325 CHECK WITH IMPACT FROM ORIG NN LOW | AEGIS IMPACT LOW AEGIS_AS=0 LEGACY=LOW RESULT=SAME (legacy and Aegis reconciliation agree; DECISION: both 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:N/I:N/A:L';CWE-703;CWE-755;CWE-459;Other CVSS 'AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L';BEST CVSS score: '2.5';DESCR 'mac80211 initialized TX metadata too late for several ieee80211_build_hdr failure paths. As a result a failed status tracked frame could be freed without consistent ACK status reporting to userspace, while cleanup behavior differed between header construction and SKB resize failures. No UAF, OOB access, double free, or other concrete memory corruption primitive is demonstrated by the affected paths. For the CVSS the PR:L value in the paranoid score reflects a local WiFi control process or a reduced capability service account that can request status tracked transmission, although typical system configuration may require administrative wireless privileges. Triggering also depends on a header construction failure or an allocation failure, so AC:H is appropriate. The issue is not remotely triggerable by ordinary received WiFi traffic. The supported impact is limited availability degradation in TX status handling rather than a kernel crash or privilege escalation.';NO MANUAL CHECK; ,and ActionableScore result is Ordinary Moderate (with actual score 0)	MAYBE	REMOTE INIT NOMEMCHK LEAK UAF SKB 	-	-	checked

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

ActionableScore=0
PrimitiveClass=NONE
RealUAF=NO
HostAdminRequired=UNKNOWN
NamespaceScopedPrivilege=UNKNOWN
ImportantCandidate=NO
ManualReview=NO
AutoDowngradeAllowed=YES
RequiresHostUID0=UNKNOWN
AuthorizationDecisionBypass=NO
ProtectedResourceImpact=NONE
B4PendingReview=NO
B4PendingConfirmed=NO

1. ActionableScore

* Raw conservative score: 0
* Conservative score: 0
* Raw paranoid score: 0
* Paranoid score: 0
* No floor or cap was applied.
* Final recommended bucket: **Ordinary Moderate**::

2. Signal breakdown

* +0 Memory corruption: no UAF, OOB access, double free, refcount mutation, or invalid write is established.
* +0 Resource leak: the preceding commit had already fixed the ACK-status frame leak. This patch corrects failure reporting and cleanup consistency.
* +0 Availability: no kernel crash, host-wide resource exhaustion, persistent leak, or device failure is demonstrated.
* +0 Authorization: no mandatory security check changes from DENY to ALLOW.
* +0 Reachability: ordinary local or remote attacker reachability is not established.

Important non-awarded signals:

* B5-R does not apply because there is no confirmed retry-accumulated heap OOB write or subsequent consumption of corrupted state.
* B3-PENDING does not apply because no shared-backing write is present.
* B4-PENDING does not apply because there is no authorization decision bypass.
* Controlled corruption, arbitrary write, UAF, disclosure, privilege escalation, and remote triggering are not demonstrated.
* No concrete persistent resource leak is scored because the commit explicitly states that the previous change cleaned up the leak.

3. Reachability analysis

The affected operation is a local mac80211 transmit path involving a status-tracked frame. Triggering the corrected behavior requires `ieee80211_build_hdr()` to encounter a failure such as allocation failure, SKB resizing failure, or invalid link selection.

The supplied context does not establish whether the complete operation requires host administration, a delegated wireless-management service, or another local permission model. Therefore `HostAdminRequired` and `RequiresHostUID0` remain UNKNOWN. It also does not establish that every required operation is available through attacker-created user or network namespaces.

Ordinary received WiFi traffic does not directly reach the vulnerable failure handling as an unauthenticated remote trigger. No race, special retry sequence, prior privileged setup chain, or unusual hardware timing is established.

4. Primitive and severity interpretation

The exact defect is late initialization of `skb->cb` TX metadata. This prevented `ieee80211_free_txskb()` from consistently reporting failed status-tracked transmissions to userspace across all failure paths.

The `skb_share_check()` failure receives separate handling because that helper has already freed the SKB. The remaining eligible paths can use `ieee80211_free_txskb()` after the metadata is initialized early enough.

This is an exceptional-path reporting and cleanup-consistency bug, not an established lifetime or memory-corruption primitive. There is no concrete repeated release of the same dangling reference. The first and second lifetime-mutation conditions therefore do not exist, and the repeated-release signal and UAF floors do not apply.

The demonstrated consequence is missing or inconsistent userspace TX failure notification. A persistent kernel leak, kernel crash, security-boundary bypass, or privilege escalation is not supported. `ImportantCandidate=NO` and `AutoDowngradeAllowed=YES` are appropriate because no unresolved corruption or authorization primitive remains.

5. One-sentence report phrase

mac80211 initialized TX metadata too late for several header construction failure paths, causing inconsistent ACK status cleanup and missing userspace failure reporting without establishing memory corruption, kernel crash, or privilege escalation.

6. Manual review recommendation

NO MANUAL CHECK NEEDED

The patch is a low-impact failure-reporting cleanup with no demonstrated memory-corruption, lifetime, authorization, or persistent resource-exhaustion primitive.

7. Call-site confidence

Call-site confidence: medium

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

Patch: wifi: mac80211: set up the TX info early to fix failure paths [ Upstream
Commit: df711e9fa20d7e996711c7f43a11a71805bef78d
Upstream URL: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=df711e9fa20d7e996711c7f43a11a71805bef78d

Changed files:
  net/mac80211/tx.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=df711e9fa20d7e996711c7f43a11a71805bef78d

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

The original Linux kernel CVE announcement for CVE-2026-98325 can be found here:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-98325

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:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
  The Best / paranoid CVSS vector: AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
  The Best / paranoid CVSS score: 2.5

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: 0

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).