CVE-2025-38512

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

wifi: prevent A-MSDU attacks in mesh networks

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

This vulnerability in the Linux kernel's Wi-Fi component allows an adjacent attacker to perform A-MSDU spoofing attacks in mesh networks, leading to a high integrity impact. Confidentiality could potentially be impacted, if there is exposure of network‑internal traffic or services via the spoofed Ethernet frames. Similarly, availability may be impacted if the spoofed packets cause problems like traffic disruption or routing instabilities.

The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.