The vulnerability occurs when the mac80211 subsystem processes an empty FILS association request. The encryption routine attempts to encrypt a zero‑length payload, causing sg_init_one to insert an invalid zero‑size page into the scatterlist. In a debug configuration this triggers a kernel BUG, and otherwise the bogus page is passed to the crypto backend, which may corrupt kernel memory. The result is an unstable kernel that can crash or be coerced into executing arbitrary code.

This defect affects the Linux kernel, specifically the mac80211 Wi‑Fi stack. All kernel releases that contain the vulnerable code path and have not yet been patched are impacted, regardless of distribution. No specific version range is listed in the advisory, so any in‑use kernel prior to the fix must be considered vulnerable.

The publicly supplied CVSS and EPSS metrics are not available, and the vulnerability is not listed in the CISA KEV catalog. Based on the description, an attacker would need to craft and transmit a malformed FILS association frame, implying a local or Wi‑Fi‑proximity attack vector. While an exploit is not documented, the kernel crash and potential memory corruption could be leveraged for privilege escalation if an attacker can force the target to process the malicious frame.