wifi: mac80211: validate TX status rate metadata

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: wifi: mac80211: validate TX status rate metadata minstrel_ht_tx_status() converts the HT/VHT rate reported in a TX status into a group and rate index and uses those to index the minstrel_ht rate tables. The existing validation only checked that an entry was present and had tries recorded; it did not check that the reported MCS, spatial stream count and bandwidth are representable by the tables, so malformed metadata passed to minstrel_ht_get_stats() or minstrel_ht_ri_get_stats() could be used as an out-of-bounds index. Validate the rate metadata in the common TX status path instead of only in minstrel_ht, since the values are used by more than rate control. The legacy ieee80211_tx_rate array and the rate_info based entries are sanitized in ieee80211_tx_status_ext() and ieee80211_tx_rate_update() before any consumer runs: an entry that does not describe a valid rate for its encoding is dropped. minstrel_ht keeps the checks that depend on its own tables, i.e. the supported number of spatial streams, the MCS group size and the supported bandwidths. This does not take away the driver's responsibility to report sane values, it only prevents a single bad report from corrupting mac80211 state. No WARN_ON() is added: with panic_on_warn a driver bug would otherwise turn into a denial of service.

Timeline

1. Oct 18, 2026, 3:49 PM UTCCVE published
2. Oct 19, 2026, 9:26 AM UTCRecord last updated

Affected versions

• Linux Linux

  From a5f69d94d8e239b48299abdd836840b7447866ab · fixed in b1961a61ab6fbe11f16f7f9b64c57a9908c6c3a8; From a5f69d94d8e239b48299abdd836840b7447866ab · fixed in 6bdcdb31318c10e6369cff8e5b32c37397e98091

• Linux Linux

  3.3

• KernelLinux

  From 3.3.0 · fixed in 7.2.10

References 2