Re: [PATCH] wifi: nl80211: require admin perm on SET_PMK / DEL_PMK

[Johannes Berg]

On Tue, 2026-04-21 at 18:45 -0400, Michael Bommarito wrote:
> 
> Both ops were introduced without a .flags gate, so the generic
> netlink layer dispatches them to an unprivileged caller instead
> of rejecting with -EPERM at the permission check.  Every other
> connection-state op in the adjacent block (CONNECT, ASSOCIATE,
> AUTHENTICATE, SET_KEY, ...) carries GENL_UNS_ADMIN_PERM; SET_PMK
> / DEL_PMK were introduced without the flag in 2017 and left
> unchanged by later refactors.  Johannes checked the original
> Intel submission history and confirmed there is no admin check
> in any prior revision either, so this seems likely to be a
> simple oversight rather than an intentional carve-out.

FWIW, this submission did originally come from Avi, but we no longer
have a driver using it (it was never upstream anyway), so that now the
only affected driver is brcmfmac, AFAICT (other non-upstream drivers I
wouldn't know, of course.)

Arend, it does seem like the right thing to do here, but I wanted to
confirm with you and thus asked Michael to CC you, what do you think?

johannes