CVE Catalog

CVE-2024-26897

MediumCVSS 4.7
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk
0.19%

8th percentile - higher than 8% of all known CVEs

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the ath9k wifi driver's ath9k_wmi_event_tasklet() may run before all data structures are fully initialized. This is because the USB device is exposed to the USB subsystem before ath9k driver initialization completes.

Risk Assessment

A race may occur leading to access of uninitialized data, causing a kernel crash (e.g., NULL pointer dereference) and denial of service. It requires plugging in a relevant USB device.

Recommendation

Update the Linux kernel to a version containing the fix that extends synchronization to the whole tasklet. Avoid using outdated kernels with ath9k_htc support.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

See all
Original NVD description (English source)

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: wifi: ath9k: delay all of ath9k_wmi_event_tasklet() until init is complete The ath9k_wmi_event_tasklet() used in ath9k_htc assumes that all the data structures have been fully initialised by the time it runs. However, because of the order in which things are initialised, this is not guaranteed to be the case, because the device is exposed to the USB subsystem before the ath9k driver initialisation is completed. We already committed a partial fix for this in commit: 8b3046abc99e ("ath9k_htc: fix NULL pointer dereference at ath9k_htc_tx_get_packet()") However, that commit only aborted the WMI_TXSTATUS_EVENTID command in the event tasklet, pairing it with an "initialisation complete" bit in the TX struct. It seems syzbot managed to trigger the race for one of the other commands as well, so let's just move the existing synchronisation bit to cover the whole tasklet (setting it at the end of ath9k_htc_probe_device() instead of inside ath9k_tx_init()).

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS