Live › vulnerability › CVE-2026-98936
Go to dashboardAfter repeated hardware restarts, the ath11k Wi-Fi driver keeps a stale station counter, so it refuses new clients and mesh peers. The sources describe a kernel warning and a refused-association error, with no sign of code execution or data theft.
Summary written from the sources below. Check the originals before acting.
First seen by InfraStack 2026-10-23 21:57 UTC. All times on this page are UTC.
Systems running Linux with an ath11k-based Qualcomm Wi-Fi adapter, such as the QCN9074 PCI card in the test notes, that perform repeated hardware restarts or act as access points or mesh nodes. Machines without ath11k hardware can skip it.
No product ranges from the sources yet.
refusing to associate station: too many connected already in the kernel log (dmesg | grep ath11k)uname -r and whether it includes the ath11k fixEach row is the first time that source carried this signal. The analyst’s rows are its own findings.
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
wifi: ath11k: reset ar->num_stations on hardware start
When (multiple) hw restart occurs, we end up in a situation where we cannot accept new stations / mesh peers. This seems to be the 'num_stations' in 'struct ath11k' that did not get reset properly in this case. In ath11k_mac_op_start(), it was indeed the only accounting var that did not get reset so let's clear it too.
This avoids problems like those:
[1248828.088023] WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 12281 at net/mac80211/util.c:1682 ieee80211_reconfig_stations+0x98/0xc0
[1248828.088115] Call trace:
[1248828.088116] ieee80211_reconfig_stations+0x98/0xc0 (P)
[1248828.088119] ieee80211_reconfig+0x774/0x1438
[1248828.088123] ieee80211_restart_work+0x10c/0x178
[1248828.088127] process_one_work+0x178/0x3c0
[1248828.088130] worker_thread+0x280/0x440
[1248828.088133] kthread+0xe0/0xf8
[1248828.088137] ret_from_fork+0x10/0x20
[1248828.088141] ---[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]---
[1248836.686604] ath11k_pci 0000:04:00.0: refusing to associate station: too many connected already (128)
[1248836.686609] ath11k_pci 0000:04:00.0: Failed to add station: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx for VDEV: 1
Tested-on: QCN9074 hw1.0 PCI WLAN.HK.2.9.0.1-01977-QCAHKSWPL_SILICONZ-1
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