Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2026-98348

critical Nessus Plugin ID 363174

Synopsis

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed with a vulnerability that the vendor indicates will not be patched.

Description

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed that are impacted by a vulnerability without a vendor supplied patch available.

- wifi: libipw: reject too-short association responses libipw_handle_assoc_resp() reads the capability, status and aid fields of the 30-byte association response prefix and then computes the information element length as stats->len - sizeof(*frame) stats->len is a u16 and sizeof() has type size_t, so the subtraction is evaluated as size_t and wraps instead of going negative. Truncating that to the u16 length parameter of libipw_parse_info_param() turns a frame shorter than the fixed fields into a length near 64 KiB, and the parser then reads past the receive buffer. Both the ipw2100 and ipw2200 management receive paths reach this function having established only that the frame carries the generic 24-byte three-address header.
Reject the frame before any fixed field is touched. Found by an AI-assisted review of length arithmetic in management frame parsers. Verified with a KUnit case under Generic KASAN on arm64 under QEMU; I do not have the hardware, so it is not tested on a real device. (CVE-2026-98348)

Note that Nessus relies on the presence of the package as reported by the vendor.

Solution

There is no known solution at this time.

See Also

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2026-98348

Plugin Details

Severity: Critical

ID: 363174

File Name: unpatched_CVE_2026_98348.nasl

Version: 1.1

Type: Local

Agent: unix

Family: Misc.

Published: 10/6/2026

Updated: 10/6/2026

Supported Sensors: Frictionless Assessment Agent, Nessus Agent, Agentless Assessment, Tenable Cloud Security, Tenable Self-Hosted Container Security, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 4.9

Percentile: 58.41

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.5

Temporal Score: 6.4

Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2026-98348

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Critical

Base Score: 9.8

Temporal Score: 9

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:U/RL:U/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:12.0, cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:13.0, p-cpe:/a:debian:debian_linux:linux

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/cpu, global_settings/vendor_unpatched, Host/OS/identifier

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Vulnerability Publication Date: 10/6/2026

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2026-98348