linux/net/wireless
Mathy Vanhoef e2c8a3c038 wifi: prevent A-MSDU attacks in mesh networks
commit 737bb912eb upstream.

This patch is a mitigation to prevent the A-MSDU spoofing vulnerability
for mesh networks. The initial update to the IEEE 802.11 standard, in
response to the FragAttacks, missed this case (CVE-2025-27558). It can
be considered a variant of CVE-2020-24588 but for mesh networks.

This patch tries to detect if a standard MSDU was turned into an A-MSDU
by an adversary. This is done by parsing a received A-MSDU as a standard
MSDU, calculating the length of the Mesh Control header, and seeing if
the 6 bytes after this header equal the start of an rfc1042 header. If
equal, this is a strong indication of an ongoing attack attempt.

This defense was tested with mac80211_hwsim against a mesh network that
uses an empty Mesh Address Extension field, i.e., when four addresses
are used, and when using a 12-byte Mesh Address Extension field, i.e.,
when six addresses are used. Functionality of normal MSDUs and A-MSDUs
was also tested, and confirmed working, when using both an empty and
12-byte Mesh Address Extension field.

It was also tested with mac80211_hwsim that A-MSDU attacks in non-mesh
networks keep being detected and prevented.

Note that the vulnerability being patched, and the defense being
implemented, was also discussed in the following paper and in the
following IEEE 802.11 presentation:

https://papers.mathyvanhoef.com/wisec2025.pdf
https://mentor.ieee.org/802.11/dcn/25/11-25-0949-00-000m-a-msdu-mesh-spoof-protection.docx

Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Mathy Vanhoef <Mathy.Vanhoef@kuleuven.be>
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20250616004635.224344-1-Mathy.Vanhoef@kuleuven.be
Signed-off-by: Johannes Berg <johannes.berg@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
History 2025-07-17 18:32:08 +02:00
..
certs wifi: cfg80211: fix certs build to not depend on file order 2024-01-01 12:39:02 +00:00
.gitignore .gitignore: add SPDX License Identifier 2020-03-25 11:50:48 +01:00
ap.c wifi: cfg80211: do some rework towards MLO link APIs 2022-06-20 12:54:58 +02:00
chan.c wifi: nl80211: relax wdev mutex check in wdev_chandef() 2022-07-01 11:42:58 +02:00
core.c wifi: cfg80211: init wiphy_work before allocating rfkill fails 2025-06-27 11:07:37 +01:00
core.h Revert "wifi: cfg80211: check wiphy mutex is held for wdev mutex" 2024-09-30 16:23:55 +02:00
debugfs.c wifi: cfg80211: debugfs: fix return type in ht40allow_map_read() 2022-08-25 10:04:46 +02:00
debugfs.h License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
ethtool.c wifi: cfg80211: use strscpy to replace strlcpy 2022-07-15 11:43:12 +02:00
ibss.c wifi: cfg80211: Add link_id parameter to various key operations for MLO 2022-08-25 10:41:05 +02:00
Kconfig cfg80211: select CONFIG_CRC32 2021-01-05 15:50:36 -08:00
lib80211.c lib80211: Remove unused macro DRV_NAME 2020-09-18 11:53:00 +02:00
lib80211_crypt_ccmp.c wifi: use struct_group to copy addresses 2022-09-03 16:40:06 +02:00
lib80211_crypt_tkip.c mm, treewide: rename kzfree() to kfree_sensitive() 2020-08-07 11:33:22 -07:00
lib80211_crypt_wep.c mm, treewide: rename kzfree() to kfree_sensitive() 2020-08-07 11:33:22 -07:00
Makefile cfg80211: fix CONFIG_CFG80211_EXTRA_REGDB_KEYDIR typo 2022-03-01 14:10:14 +01:00
mesh.c wifi: cfg80211: do some rework towards MLO link APIs 2022-06-20 12:54:58 +02:00
mlme.c wifi: cfg80211: reject auth/assoc to AP with our address 2023-09-23 11:11:03 +02:00
nl80211.c wifi: nl80211: reject cooked mode if it is set along with other flags 2025-03-13 12:53:14 +01:00
nl80211.h wifi: cfg80211/nl80211: move rx management data into a struct 2022-07-22 14:28:26 +02:00
ocb.c wifi: cfg80211: ocb: don't leave if not joined 2023-09-23 11:11:03 +02:00
of.c cfg80211: support ieee80211-freq-limit DT property 2017-01-06 14:01:13 +01:00
pmsr.c wifi: cfg80211: pmsr: use correct nla_get_uX functions 2024-06-21 14:35:31 +02:00
radiotap.c mac80211: Use flex-array for radiotap header bitmap 2021-08-13 09:58:25 +02:00
rdev-ops.h wifi: cfg80211: fix 6 GHz scan request building 2024-07-25 09:49:09 +02:00
reg.c wifi: cfg80211: regulatory: improve invalid hints checking 2025-03-13 12:53:14 +01:00
reg.h cfg80211: avoid holding the RTNL when calling the driver 2021-01-26 11:55:50 +01:00
scan.c wifi: cfg80211: adjust allocation of colocated AP data 2025-02-21 13:49:05 +01:00
sme.c wifi: cfg80211: fix two more possible UBSAN-detected off-by-one errors 2024-10-17 15:20:41 +02:00
sysfs.c wifi: cfg80211: fully move wiphy work to unbound workqueue 2024-06-21 14:35:31 +02:00
sysfs.h License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
trace.c cfg80211: add tracing to rdev-ops 2012-10-18 10:53:37 +02:00
trace.h wifi: cfg80211: fix the order of arguments for trace events of the tx_rx_evt class 2024-06-12 11:02:58 +02:00
util.c wifi: prevent A-MSDU attacks in mesh networks 2025-07-17 18:32:08 +02:00
wext-compat.c wifi: cfg80211: Add link_id parameter to various key operations for MLO 2022-08-25 10:41:05 +02:00
wext-compat.h treewide: Add SPDX license identifier for missed files 2019-05-21 10:50:45 +02:00
wext-core.c wifi: wext-core: Fix -Wstringop-overflow warning in ioctl_standard_iw_point() 2023-07-27 08:50:35 +02:00
wext-priv.c wext: fix potential private ioctl memory content leak 2010-09-20 13:41:40 -04:00
wext-proc.c proc: introduce proc_create_net{,_data} 2018-05-16 07:24:30 +02:00
wext-sme.c wifi: cfg80211: do some rework towards MLO link APIs 2022-06-20 12:54:58 +02:00
wext-spy.c wireless: wext-spy: Fix out-of-bounds warning 2021-06-23 10:57:17 +02:00