CVE-2026-68469

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

wifi: mwifiex: fix permanently busy scans after multiple roam iterations

In order for the firmware to sleep, the driver has to confirm a previously received sleep request. The normal sequence of evets goes like this: EVENTSLEEP -> adapter->psstate = PSSTATEPRESLEEP -> sleep-confirm -> SLEEP -> EVENTAWAKE -> AWAKE. Before sending the sleep-confirm command, the driver must make sure there are no commands either running or waiting to be completed.

mwifiexret80211associate() unconditionally sets psstate = PSSTATEAWAKE when it processes the association command response, outside of the normal powersave management flow. If EVENTSLEEP arrives while the association command is in flight, psstate is PRESLEEP when the association command response is parsed, and the forced AWAKE overwrites it. The deferred sleep-confirm is never sent.

A subsequent scanstart command is correctly acknowledged, but the firmware doesn't generate scanresult events. The scan request never finishes, and additional requests from userspace fail with -EBUSY.

After testing on both IW412 and W8997, I could only trigger the bug on the IW412 and observed the firmwares behave differently. On the IW412 the firmware still sends EVENTSLEEP while the authentication / association process is ongoing. A W8997 under the same conditions seems to suppress power-save for the duration of the association, so PRESLEEP never coincided with the association response even after extended periods of testing using the loops described below (>12hours).

On the IW412, the delay between commands that triggers an EVENTSLEEP was empirically determined to be ~20ms. This delay can naturally occur when the driver is outputting debugging information (debugmask = 0x00000037), in which situation the busy scans issue is repeatable while running "test 1)" as described below. If the delay between commands is less than ~20ms, the firmware stays awake and the issue was not reproducible running the same test.

The hostmlme=false path also behaves differently. In this case, the entire authentication / association transaction is executed by one command (HostCmdCMD80211ASSOCIATE), and the firmware doesn't emit EVENTSLEEP while the command is running.

Remove the assignment so the ps_state is only manipulated in the paths that are related to powersave event handling and on the main workqueue for correct sleep confirmation.

The following loop tests were performed (with debugging output enabled): 1) force roaming between two AP's, one 5GHz and one 2.4GHz, same SSID. Use wpacli to trigger the roaming behavior, sleep 2s between iterations. 2) force a disconnection to AP 1 and a connection to AP 2, test scan. Use wpacli to trigger the connection changes, sleep 2s between iterations.

Each test ran in each device for at least 3 hours.