Executive brief
A vulnerability was identified in the Linux kernel's Realtek rtl8723bs Wi-Fi driver. A malicious wireless access point could send a specially crafted association response packet to trigger an out-of-bounds memory read on a connected device. This could lead to system instability or potentially expose sensitive information from the system's memory.
Technical details
An out-of-bounds (OOB) read vulnerability exists in the 'rtl8723bs' staging driver within the 'OnAssocRsp()' function. The IE parsing loop incorrectly validates the packet length, advancing by (pIE->length + 2) without ensuring sufficient bytes remain for the next header or the declared data length. A malicious Access Point (AP) can exploit this by sending a truncated or malformed Association Response frame, causing the driver to read beyond the allocated receive buffer. This can result in a kernel oops or information disclosure. The fix introduces bounds checks to ensure both the IE header and its payload reside within the actual packet length.
Affected products
- Linux Linux Kernel 4.12 to 5.15.212, 6.1.101, 6.6.42, 6.9.11, 6.10.1
Timeline
- 2026-05-22: other: Vulnerability fixed in source code
- 2026-07-24: patched: Patches committed to stable branches
- 2026-07-25: disclosed: CVE published
References
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/0406d746574e875d8778552eb674fcfbf5330bfb
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/04f612dc03427e0b1ac80a2611b5ac0ba93ac446
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/0970dd47726a57e52013594e9fbf667586eb3673
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/1a52a05471494546f955a58e8c170c0c796c52d5
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7e7741c8315e4160aead00a60cdd6f81ab880717
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/889ca6000ac7fa73457b041848fcb08e0d51b809
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/f9654207e92283e0acac5d64fe5f8835383b5a23