CVE-2026-46051

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's md/raid5 component. When the retry_aligned_read() function encounters an overlapped stripe, an issue in how stripes are released and processed can lead to an infinite loop. This prevents the system from resolving the overlap, resulting in a soft lockup and a Denial of Service (DoS) for the affected system.

This vulnerability is rated as Moderate severity rather than Important because exploitation requires local access to an active software RAID configuration and results only in a denial of service without compromising system confidentiality or integrity. On Red Hat Enterprise Linux installations, the affected md/raid5 code is part of the raid456 module, which is loaded only when software RAID arrays running levels 4, 5, or 6 are assembled. A local user generating specific concurrent I/O operations against an active array could cause the kernel worker thread to enter an unresolvable processing loop, triggering a CPU soft lockup. Standard deployments utilizing hardware RAID controllers, cloud-managed block devices, or simple disk partitioning are unaffected by this condition.

The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.

Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options don't meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base or stability.