CVEvulnerability
CVE-2025-38512
7.8 HIGH
Official page ↗
- Status
- Modified
- Published
- 2025-08-16
- Last modified
- 2026-10-15
- Assigner
- 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
- CVSS 3.1 (416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67)
- 8.8 HIGH — CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
- CVSS 3.1 ([email protected])
- 7.8 HIGH — CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
wifi: prevent A-MSDU attacks in mesh networks
This patch is a mitigation to prevent the A-MSDU spoofing vulnerability
for mesh networks. The initial update to the IEEE 802.11 standard, in
response to the FragAttacks, missed this case (CVE-2025-27558). It can
be considered a variant of CVE-2020-24588 but for mesh networks.
This patch tries to detect if a standard MSDU was turned into an A-MSDU
by an adversary. This is done by parsing a received A-MSDU as a standard
MSDU, calculating the length of the Mesh Control header, and seeing if
the 6 bytes after this header equal the start of an rfc1042 header. If
equal, this is a strong indication of an ongoing attack attempt.
This defense was tested with mac80211_hwsim against a mesh network that
uses an empty Mesh Address Extension field, i.e., when four addresses
are used, and when using a 12-byte Mesh Address Extension field, i.e.,
when six addresses are used. Functionality of normal MSDUs and A-MSDUs
was also tested, and confirmed working, when using both an empty and
12-byte Mesh Address Extension field.
It was also tested with mac80211_hwsim that A-MSDU attacks in non-mesh
networks keep being detected and prevented.
Note that the vulnerability being patched, and the defense being
implemented, was also discussed in the following paper and in the
following IEEE 802.11 presentation:
https://papers.mathyvanhoef.com/wisec2025.pdf
https://mentor.ieee.org/802.11/dcn/25/11-25-0949-00-000m-a-msdu-mesh-spoof-protection.docx
Affected configurations
• linux linux kernel (>= 6.1.107 < 6.1.146)
• linux linux kernel (>= 6.3 < 6.6.99)
• linux linux kernel (>= 6.7 < 6.12.39)
• linux linux kernel (>= 6.13 < 6.15.7)
• linux linux kernel 6.16
• debian debian linux 11.0
References
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/6e3b09402cc6c3e3474fa548e8adf6897dda05de Patch
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/737bb912ebbe4571195c56eba557c4d7315b26fb Patch
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e01851f6e9a665a6011b14714b271d3e6b0b8d32 Patch
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e2c8a3c0388aef6bfc4aabfba07bc7dff16eea80 Patch
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ec6392061de6681148b63ee6c8744da833498cdd Patch
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2025/10/msg00008.html Mailing List, Third Party Advisory