Linux Kernel up to 7.2.5 mt76 ieee80211_restart_hw race condition

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability identified as very critical has been detected in Linux Kernel up to 7.2.5. Affected is the function ieee80211_restart_hw of the component mt76. This manipulation causes race condition. This vulnerability appears as CVE-2026-90365. The attack requires local access. There is no available exploit. You should upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in Linux Kernel up to 7.2.5. It has been declared as very critical. Affected by this vulnerability is the function ieee80211_restart_hw of the component mt76. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a race condition vulnerability. The CWE definition for the vulnerability is CWE-362. The product contains a code sequence that can run concurrently with other code, and the code sequence requires temporary, exclusive access to a shared resource, but a timing window exists in which the shared resource can be modified by another code sequence that is operating concurrently. As an impact it is known to affect confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The summary by CVE is:

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: wifi: mt76: cancel reset and rc work on device unregister Both drivers cancelled dump_work on unregister but left reset_work and rc_work to be flushed only by destroy_workqueue() in mt76_free_device(), which runs after the hw is unregistered and the hardware stopped. A reset_work that fires in that window calls ieee80211_restart_hw() and re-arms mac_work on an unregistered hw, and rc_work touches station state being torn down. Cancel both up front, alongside dump_work.

The advisory is shared at git.kernel.org. This vulnerability is known as CVE-2026-90365 since 09/11/2026. The exploitation appears to be easy. An attack has to be approached locally. Additional levels of successful authentication are necessary for exploitation. Technical details are known, but no exploit is available. The price for an exploit might be around USD $0-$5k at the moment (estimation calculated on 09/17/2026).

Upgrading to version 7.2.6 or 7.3-rc1 eliminates this vulnerability. Applying the patch c4dc85481d38951ca7f8bc104e711936306cc664/e995d3dccc9d980af13a60ad37409ed1561f9eeb is able to eliminate this problem. The best possible mitigation is suggested to be upgrading to the latest version.

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Productinfo

Type

• Operating System

Vendor

• Linux

Name

• Kernel

Version

• 7.2.0
• 7.2.1
• 7.2.2
• 7.2.3
• 7.2.4
• 7.2.5

License

• open-source

Website

• Vendor: https://www.kernel.org/

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