ath12k: QCN9274 WLAN.WBE.1.6 firmware drops pre-auth EAPOL in TX encap-offload mode (WPA 4-way handshake fails in AP mode)

[Vasanthakumar Thiagarajan]

On 9/4/2026 1:32 PM, Michael Pfeifroth wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'd like to report a firmware behaviour regression on QCN9274 that breaks
> encrypted AP mode, and ask how you'd prefer to see it addressed upstream.
> 
> Hardware/platform: QCN9274 hw2.0, PCIe, on an NXP ls1046 (ARM64, little-endian).
> Firmware: WLAN.WBE.1.6-01243 (QC_IMAGE_VERSION_STRING=WLAN.WBE.1.6-01243-
> QCAHKSWPL_SILICONZ-1, fw_version 0x160484db), from linux-firmware
> ath12k/QCN9274/hw2.0.
> Driver: ath12k, current mainline / backports.
> 
> Symptom
> -------
> With WPA2-PSK or WPA3-SAE in AP mode, stations authenticate and associate,
> but the 4-way handshake never completes: hostapd (-dd) reports "did not Ack
> EAPOL-Key frame", the EAPOL-Key timeout retries exhaust, and the client is
> deauthenticated with reason 15 (4-way handshake timeout). Open/unencrypted
> APs work fine.

Worth trying with commit 
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=1e33f8acd837420160ea088160d8648a3db54c3b, 
if it is not part of your image already.

Vasanth