CVE-2026-23444

Updated on 03 Apr 2026

Severity

5.5 Medium severity

Details

CVSS score
5.5
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Overview

About vulnerability

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

wifi: mac80211: always free skb on ieee80211_tx_prepare_skb() failure

ieee80211_tx_prepare_skb() has three error paths, but only two of them free the skb. The first error path (ieee80211_tx_prepare() returning TX_DROP) does not free it, while invoke_tx_handlers() failure and the fragmentation check both do.

Add kfree_skb() to the first error path so all three are consistent, and remove the now-redundant frees in callers (ath9k, mt76, mac80211_hwsim) to avoid double-free.

Document the skb ownership guarantee in the function’s kdoc.

Details

Fixes

KernelCare state

Live-patch status from KernelCare for each operating system.

Operating system Status Covered kernels
AlmaLinux 9.6 ESU Released
11 kernels
  • 5.14.0-570.62.1.el9_6.tuxcare.1.els1
  • 5.14.0-570.62.1.el9_6.tuxcare.1.els2
  • 5.14.0-570.62.1.el9_6.tuxcare.1.els3
  • 5.14.0-570.62.1.el9_6.tuxcare.1.els4
  • 5.14.0-570.62.1.el9_6.tuxcare.1.els5
  • 5.14.0-570.62.1.el9_6.tuxcare.1.els6
  • 5.14.0-570.62.1.el9_6.tuxcare.1.els7
  • 5.14.0-570.62.1.el9_6.tuxcare.5.els1
  • 5.14.0-570.62.1.el9_6.tuxcare.5.els2
  • 5.14.0-570.62.1.el9_6.tuxcare.5.els3
  • 5.14.0-570.62.1.el9_6.tuxcare.5.els4
Debian 11 Planned
Debian 11 cloud Planned
Debian 12 Planned
Debian 13 Planned
Ubuntu 22.04 Planned
Ubuntu 24.04 Planned