Copyright © 2012 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. Moderate 2026-10-06T00:00:00 kernel: wifi: mac80211: avoid out-of-bounds read for empty PREQ elements 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H CWE-125

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: wifi: mac80211: avoid out-of-bounds read for empty PREQ elements ieee80211_mesh_preq_size_ok() derives the location of the PREQ bottom fields before checking whether the element contains even the fixed header. ieee80211_mesh_hwmp_preq_get_bottom() reads the flags byte to account for the optional Address Extension field. Consequently, an empty PREQ element causes a one-byte read beyond its declared payload. Move the helper call after both size checks, so the bottom fields are only accessed when they are present.

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's mac80211 wireless networking subsystem. An adjacent attacker can trigger an out-of-bounds read by transmitting specially crafted wireless mesh network frames containing empty Path Request (PREQ) elements. This issue occurs because the kernel reads header fields before verifying the element size. Exploitation of this flaw may lead to a denial of service (DoS) or the disclosure of sensitive memory information.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 Not affected kernel Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Not affected kernel Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Not affected kernel Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Not affected kernel-rt Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Not affected kernel Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Not affected kernel-rt Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 Not affected kernel Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 Not affected kernel-rt Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 Not affected openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-8 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 Not affected openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9 https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-98183 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-98183 https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/security/vulns.git/plain/cve/published/2026/CVE-2026-98183.mbox