CVEvulnerability
CVE-2026-98703
- Status
- Received
- Published
- 2026-10-18
- Last modified
- 2026-10-21
- Assigner
- 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
wifi: mac80211: minstrel_ht: validate fixed rate index
The fixed_rate_idx debugfs file is a plain u32 attribute, so any value
can be written to it. minstrel_ht_update_stats() then copies the value
into mi->max_tp_rate[] and mi->max_prob_rate, and
minstrel_ht_set_rate() uses MI_RATE_GROUP()/MI_RATE_IDX() to index
minstrel_mcs_groups[] (42 entries) and mi->groups[].rates[] (10 entries)
with it.
Writing e.g. 65535 selects group 4095 and rate index 15, far outside
both arrays. The out-of-bounds entries are dereferenced and updated as
struct minstrel_rate_stats (retry counts, etc.), so the invalid index
corrupts adjacent kernel memory. With CONFIG_UBSAN_BOUNDS the access is
reported as an array-index-out-of-bounds in minstrel_ht_set_rate().
Only a valid group/rate pair, or U32_MAX to disable fixed rate
processing, can be used safely, so reject any other value when the
debugfs file is written.
The file is only reachable through a root-only debugfs mount, so this is
not a privilege boundary. The out-of-bounds access is still a bug that
must not be reachable through a writable debugfs attribute.
References
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/15fb9e3cea55fbc378261ce35a32b0f8828f0000 git.kernel.org
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/42aa9feb27b600809414a3c6b0c650bafba542a9 git.kernel.org
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/43082d604a9937b94ceb2e484403956d0f363324 git.kernel.org
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/eebc70f132041b35da9ec74d5d395083125289b2 git.kernel.org
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/f8ab6ae1fa360b0191252677f41e781dcb0ffe6e git.kernel.org