CVE-2022-49290
Published: Feb 26, 2025
Modified: May 23, 2026
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mac80211: fix potential double free on mesh join While commit 6a01afcf8468 ("mac80211: mesh: Free ie data when leaving mesh") fixed a memory leak on mesh leave / teardown it introduced a potential memory corruption caused by a double free when rejoining the mesh: ieee80211_leave_mesh() -> kfree(sdata->u.mesh.ie); ... ieee80211_join_mesh() -> copy_mesh_setup() -> old_ie = ifmsh->ie; -> kfree(old_ie); This double free / kernel panics can be reproduced by using wpa_supplicant with an encrypted mesh (if set up without encryption via "iw" then ifmsh->ie is always NULL, which avoids this issue). And then calling: $ iw dev mesh0 mesh leave $ iw dev mesh0 mesh join my-mesh Note that typically these commands are not used / working when using wpa_supplicant. And it seems that wpa_supplicant or wpa_cli are going through a NETDEV_DOWN/NETDEV_UP cycle between a mesh leave and mesh join where the NETDEV_UP resets the mesh.ie to NULL via a memcpy of default_mesh_setup in cfg80211_netdev_notifier_call, which then avoids the memory corruption, too. The issue was first observed in an application which was not using wpa_supplicant but "Senf" instead, which implements its own calls to nl80211. Fixing the issue by removing the kfree()'ing of the mesh IE in the mesh join function and leaving it solely up to the mesh leave to free the mesh IE.
| Vendor | Product | Versions |
|---|---|---|
Linux | Linux | affected 3212d6248faf0efce6b7a718e198feecce0eea05 - < 615716af8644813355e014314a0bc1e961250f5aaffected 86e7d4cd2ed5f4b0188afce8199faffcf1ae7c7e - < c1d9c3628ef0a0ca197595d0f9e01cd3b5dda186affected 37bccfa89559a70c044b5ccde3c916a91388e14a - < 273ebddc5fda2967492cb0b6cdd7d81cfb821b76affected 3f15e3e62c80e180282f0cbc5559264e11c328b7 - < 3bbd0000d012f92aec423b224784fbf0f7bf40f8affected 6a01afcf8468d3ca2bd8bbb27503f60dcf643b20 - < 5d3ff9542a40ce034416bca03864709540a36016+12 more versions |
Linux | Linux | affected 5.8unaffected 0 - < 5.8unaffected 4.9.309 - <= 4.9.*unaffected 4.14.274 - <= 4.14.*unaffected 4.19.237 - <= 4.19.*+6 more versions |
References
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