Reference page — cumulative record through Wednesday, August 19, 2026 UTC. Reference pages update as the archive grows; only dated daily editions are immutable pages of record.
Linux Linux — wifi: prevent A-MSDU attacks in mesh networks
AV AC PR UI S C I A CVSS EPSS %ile KEV
L L L N U H H H 7.8 .0022 13.0 —
AFFECTED
Product Versions Fixed
Linux 79720743421753ff72bfa0d79976c534645b81c1 – —
Linux 6.3 – 6.1.146
TIMELINE
Apr 16 Reserved by Linux
Aug 16 Published (CNA: Linux)
Jul 30 RESCORED — CVE-2025-38512 (Linux). CVSS 8.8 → 7.8 (NVD).
Description
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
Lifecycle
Complete event history — 3 events, chronological
| Date | Event | Detail |
| April 16, 2025 | Reserved | Reserved by Linux |
| August 16, 2025 | Published | Published (CNA: Linux) |
| July 30, 2026 | RESCORED | RESCORED — CVE-2025-38512 (Linux). CVSS 8.8 → 7.8 (NVD). |
Affected
Affected products and packages — 2 rows
| Vendor | Product / Package | Ecosystem | Version introduced | Fixed |
| Linux | Linux | — | 79720743421753ff72bfa0d79976c534645b81c1 | — |
| Linux | Linux | — | 6.3 | 6.1.146 |
About this page
This is a reference page, not a dated page of record. It assembles the complete lifecycle of CVE-2025-38512 from the CVE Program record, NVD enrichment, the CISA KEV catalog, EPSS, and OSV advisories. The box score's numbers (CVSS, EPSS, KEV status) are current as of Wednesday, August 19, 2026 UTC and are re-derived as the archive grows; only dated daily editions are immutable pages of record. The authoritative source for this identifier is cve.org.