MediumCVE-2026-23396

    Linux Kernel: NULL Pointer Dereference (CVE-2026-23396)

    Published Last modified Sources: Debian LTS, Debian, Siemens ProductCERT, SUSE, Ubuntu, BSI, EUVD, CVE.org, Msrc Update Guide

    What is affected, what to do

    In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: wifi: mac80211: fix NULL deref in mesh_matches_local() mesh_matches_local() unconditionally dereferences ie->mesh_config to compare mesh configuration parameters. When called from mesh_rx_csa_frame(), the parsed action-frame elements may not contain a Mesh Configuration IE, leaving ie->mesh_config NULL and triggering a kernel NULL pointer dereference.

    Update Linux Kernel to version 5.10.253, Linux Kernel to version 5.15.203, Linux Kernel to version 6.1.167.

    Affected
    • Linux Kernel lt 2.6.26..5.10.253
    • Linux Kernel lt 5.11..5.15.203
    • Linux Kernel lt 5.16..6.1.167
    • Linux Kernel lt 6.2..6.6.130
    • Linux Kernel lt 6.7..6.12.78
    • Linux Kernel lt 6.13..6.18.20
    • Linux Kernel lt 6.19..6.19.10
    • Linux Kernel lt 6.20..7.0
    Fixed in
    • Linux Kernel 5.10.253
    • Linux Kernel 5.15.203
    • Linux Kernel 6.1.167
    • Linux Kernel 6.6.130
    • Linux Kernel 6.12.78
    • Linux Kernel 6.18.20
    • Linux Kernel 6.19.10
    • Linux Kernel 7.0

    Not sure whether and how you are affected? Ask a question about this vulnerability

    Metrics

    6.5

    Priority

    XIEM Effective CVSS: highest available CVSS rating from NVD and vendor data.

    Source: Vendor (CNA), CVSS v3

    5.5

    CVSS v3

    Severity Medium on the scale from 0 to 10.

    Source: Debian LTS, Debian, Siemens ProductCERT, SUSE, Ubuntu, BSI, EUVD, CVE.org, Msrc Update Guide

    0.1 %

    EPSS score

    Low — model estimates < 1% exploitation likelihood.

    Source: FIRST EPSS, percentile 1.9

    Show all metrics
    Severity
    Medium
    Priority (0–325)

    The priority score is a consolidated metric that condenses several individual signals into a single, action-guiding ranking: technical severity (CVSS), exploitation likelihood (EPSS), known-exploited status (KEV) and the context of the affected asset. The aim is to answer the only truly important question in vulnerability management: what first?

    Read in glossary
    43.08 Methodology
    Exploit maturity

    An exploit is code or a technique that specifically uses a concrete vulnerability to force unintended behaviour — such as executing code or escalating privileges. It is the tool that turns a theoretical flaw into a practical attack.

    Read in glossary
    no public PoC known
    XIEM Effective CVSS

    XIEM® is the tiered managed-security operating model from NEOSEC and a registered trademark of NEOSEC GmbH. It extends classic SIEM — the central collection, normalisation and correlation of security-relevant events — with endpoint forensics, network visibility and deception technology, and consolidates them into three building tiers: Sentry, Orchestrate and Command.

    Read in glossary
    6.5 Methodology
    CVSS v3

    CVSS is the globally established, open standard for assessing the technical severity of a vulnerability on a scale from 0 to 10. It describes how easily a flaw can be exploited and what damage it can cause — but not how likely its actual exploitation is. CVSS and the complementary EPSS deliberately answer different questions.

    Read in glossary
    5.5
    EPSS score

    The EPSS score is the absolute model output for an individual vulnerability: the estimated probability of real-world exploitation within the next 30 days, expressed as a value between 0 and 1 (i.e. 0 % to 100 %). A score of 0.42 means „the model estimates a 42 % chance of real-world exploitation within 30 days“.

    Read in glossary
    0.1 %
    Low — model estimates < 1% exploitation likelihood.
    EPSS percentile

    The EPSS percentile is the relative position of a vulnerability within all EPSS-scored CVEs, expressed as a value between 0 and 1. A percentile of 0.90 means „this CVE has a higher EPSS score than 90 % of all other scored CVEs“. Unlike the EPSS score, it is not a probability — but a positioning within a ranking.

    Read in glossary
    1.9
    Low — this CVE sits in the lower 10% of all CVEs scored today.
    KEV status

    The KEV catalogue is a list maintained by the US authority CISA of vulnerabilities for which active exploitation in the wild has been confirmed. It answers not the question „how severe?“ but „is it already being attacked?“ — thereby sharply prioritising patching.

    Read in glossary
    —
    Published

    Detection rules

    No NEOSEC detection rule is available for this vulnerability yet.

    Classification under NIS2 and CRA

    Rule-based classification from exploitation status and severity. It does not replace a case-by-case assessment.

    NIS2

    NIS2 is EU Directive (EU) 2022/2555 to raise the level of cybersecurity across the Union. It substantially broadens obligations compared with the first NIS directive: more sectors, mandatory risk management, staged reporting duties and personal accountability of senior management.

    Read in glossary
    Handle the vulnerability in regular vulnerability handling under Art. 21(2)(e) NIS2.
    CRA

    The CRA is EU Regulation (EU) 2024/2847 setting horizontal cybersecurity requirements for „products with digital elements“ — from industrial controllers and software to connected consumer devices. For the first time manufacturers must ensure security across the entire product lifecycle, handle vulnerabilities and provide security updates.

    Read in glossary
    From 11.12.2027, Annex I Part II CRA requires manufacturers of affected products with digital elements to handle vulnerabilities without delay and provide security updates.
    ISO/IEC 27001

    ISO/IEC 27001 is the internationally leading standard for an information security management system (ISMS). It describes a risk-based, process-oriented framework to systematically plan, implement, review and improve information security.

    Read in glossary
    Control A.8.8, management of technical vulnerabilities: assess relevance to your systems, plan remediation and keep evidence.

    Description

    In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: wifi: mac80211: fix NULL deref in mesh_matches_local() mesh_matches_local() unconditionally dereferences ie->mesh_config to compare mesh configuration parameters. When called from mesh_rx_csa_frame(), the parsed action-frame elements may not contain a Mesh Configuration IE, leaving ie->mesh_config NULL and triggering a kernel NULL pointer dereference. The other two callers are already safe: - ieee80211_mesh_rx_bcn_presp() checks !elems->mesh_config before calling mesh_matches_local() - mesh_plink_get_event() is only reached through mesh_process_plink_frame(), which checks !elems->mesh_config, too mesh_rx_csa_frame() is the only caller that passes raw parsed elements to mesh_matches_local() without guarding mesh_config. An adjacent attacker can exploit this by sending a crafted CSA action frame that includes a valid Mesh ID IE but omits the Mesh Configuration IE, crashing the kernel. The captured crash log: Oops: general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address ... KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x0000000000000000-0x0000000000000007] Workqueue: events_unbound cfg80211_wiphy_work [...] Call Trace: <TASK> ? __pfx_mesh_matches_local (net/mac80211/mesh.c:65) ieee80211_mesh_rx_queued_mgmt (net/mac80211/mesh.c:1686) [...] ieee80211_iface_work (net/mac80211/iface.c:1754 net/mac80211/iface.c:1802) [...] cfg80211_wiphy_work (net/wireless/core.c:426) process_one_work (net/kernel/workqueue.c:3280) ? assign_work (net/kernel/workqueue.c:1219) worker_thread (net/kernel/workqueue.c:3352) ? __pfx_worker_thread (net/kernel/workqueue.c:3385) kthread (net/kernel/kthread.c:436) [...] ret_from_fork_asm (net/arch/x86/entry/entry_64.S:255) </TASK> This patch adds a NULL check for ie->mesh_config at the top of mesh_matches_local() to return false early when the Mesh Configuration IE is absent.

    Source: Debian LTS Advisories, Debian Security Advisories, siemens_advisory, suse_csaf, Ubuntu Security Notices, BSI WID Portal, BSI CSAF, ENISA EUVD, cvelistv5, NVD (NIST), Microsoft Security Update Guide, CVE.org (MITRE)

    Affected products

    The following versions are affected. Older releases of the same product line are also vulnerable unless stated otherwise.

    Affected products
    Affected versionsFixed in
    LinuxLinux
    • 2.6.26 – < 5.10.253
    • 6.2 – < 6.6.130
    • 6.7 – < 6.12.78
    • 6.19 – < 6.19.10
    • 6.13 – < 6.18.20
    • 5.11 – < 5.15.203
    • 6.20 – < 7.0
    • 5.16 – < 6.1.167
    • 5.10.253
    • 6.6.130
    • 6.12.78
    • 6.19.10
    • 6.18.20
    • 5.15.203
    • 7.0
    • 6.1.167
    SiemensSIMATIC S7
    • 1500 TM MFP V1.1.1 GNU/Linux subsystem
    • —

    Vendors and products

    Affected operating systems

    Affected operating systems
    Linuxdebianlinuxbookworm
    Linuxdebianlinuxbullseye
    Linuxdebianlinuxtrixie
    Linuxdebianlinux-6.1bullseye
    Linuxlinuxlinux_kernel2.6.26
    Linuxlinuxlinux_kernel7.0
    Linuxlinuxlinux_kernel—

    References & sources

    Changes to this CVE

    Who changed this CVE and when: NVD (analysis, affected products, CVSS), the CVE publisher (CNA) and additional providers such as CISA (ADP).

    1. Record modifiedLinux

      Show 24 original changes
      Individual changes of this event as published by NVD
      TypeActionBeforeAfter
      Referenceadded
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      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/0a4da176ae4b4e075a19c00d3e269cfd5e05a813
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      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/14a4fd13657a3f2489db6566f081adfb27a49c64
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      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/44699c6cdfce80a0f296b54ae9314461e3e41b3d
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      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/74de6fa472b03bc8cde0a081484e9960bcbda568
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      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7c55a3deaf7eaaafa2546f8de7fed19382a0a116
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      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a90279e7f7ea0b7e923a1c5ebee9a6b78b6d1004
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      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c1e3f2416fb27c816ce96d747d3e784e31f4d95c
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      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c73bb9a2d33bf81f6eecaa0f474b6c6dbe9855bd
      Referenceremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/0a4da176ae4b4e075a19c00d3e269cfd5e05a813
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      Referenceremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/14a4fd13657a3f2489db6566f081adfb27a49c64
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      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/44699c6cdfce80a0f296b54ae9314461e3e41b3d
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      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/74de6fa472b03bc8cde0a081484e9960bcbda568
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      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7c55a3deaf7eaaafa2546f8de7fed19382a0a116
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      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a90279e7f7ea0b7e923a1c5ebee9a6b78b6d1004
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      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c1e3f2416fb27c816ce96d747d3e784e31f4d95c
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      Referenceremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c73bb9a2d33bf81f6eecaa0f474b6c6dbe9855bd
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      Reference typeremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/0a4da176ae4b4e075a19c00d3e269cfd5e05a813 Types: Patch
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      Reference typeremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/14a4fd13657a3f2489db6566f081adfb27a49c64 Types: Patch
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      Reference typeremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/44699c6cdfce80a0f296b54ae9314461e3e41b3d Types: Patch
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      Reference typeremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/74de6fa472b03bc8cde0a081484e9960bcbda568 Types: Patch
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      Reference typeremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7c55a3deaf7eaaafa2546f8de7fed19382a0a116 Types: Patch
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      Reference typeremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a90279e7f7ea0b7e923a1c5ebee9a6b78b6d1004 Types: Patch
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      Reference typeremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c1e3f2416fb27c816ce96d747d3e784e31f4d95c Types: Patch
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      Reference typeremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c73bb9a2d33bf81f6eecaa0f474b6c6dbe9855bd Types: Patch
      —

      Source identifier: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67

    2. Record modifiedSiemens ADP

      Show 2 original changes
      Individual changes of this event as published by NVD
      TypeActionBeforeAfter
      Affected versions (publisher)added
      —
      New affected value received. <a href="https://github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5/blob/main/cves/2026/23xxx/CVE-2026-23396.json">CVE-2026-23396</a>
      Referenceadded
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      https://cert-portal.siemens.com/productcert/html/ssa-784472.html

      Source identifier: 0b142b55-0307-4c5a-b3c9-f314f3fb7c5e

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