CVE-2026-72398

A flaw was found in the Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) implementation within the Linux kernel. When cookie authentication is disabled, a remote attacker can tamper with the INIT chunk data during the SCTP handshake. This occurs because the reconstructed INIT chunk from the COOKIE-ECHO message is not re-verified, leading to the processing of untrusted data. Successful exploitation can result in a denial of service, as new associations are freed and packets are discarded.

This vulnerability is rated as Moderate severity because exploitation requires an environment actively running an SCTP endpoint with cookie authentication disabled, which is a non-standard configuration on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. In typical Red Hat deployments, the SCTP kernel module is not loaded by default, significantly limiting exposure. Under susceptible configurations, an adversary capable of tampering with handshake parameters can manipulate connection setup state, resulting in aborted associations or a denial of service.

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.