CVE-2022-49290

mac80211: fix potential double free on mesh join

High · published February 26, 2025

CVSS v3.1
7.8
EPSS
0%
Percentile
16.6
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

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.

The record
Technical detail
CVSS v3.1
7.8 · HIGH
Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS v4.0
Not supplied
EPSS
0.00259 · 16.6th percentile
Published
2025-02-26T01:56Z
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 26 FEB 01:56Z
    mac80211: fix potential double free on mesh join
    cvelistv5