CVE-2024-26897

Technical Description

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() ins

Remediation

Check the references section for vendor advisories and patches from linux. Update linux_kernel to the latest patched version. If immediate patching is not possible, review the CVSS vector to understand the attack surface and apply compensating controls such as network segmentation or access restrictions.

Affected Products

References