CVE-2026-74523

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's qede network driver. When a qede Network Interface Card (NIC) with VXLAN/GENEVE tunnel ports experiences a transmit (TX) timeout, a deadlock can occur in the driver's recovery process. This deadlock prevents the system's networking control plane from responding, leading to a denial of service for various network-related operations and services on the affected machine.

A moderate impact denial-of-service flaw was found in the Linux kernel qede network driver, affecting the kernel and kernel-rt packages in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, 9, and 10, and Red Hat In-Vehicle OS 2. When a qede network interface card that has VXLAN or GENEVE tunnel ports configured experiences a transmit (TX) timeout, the driver's error-recovery path tries to re-acquire its own non-recursive qede_lock mutex from the same task while rtnl_lock is held. The resulting self-deadlock wedges the recovery worker with the rtnetlink lock held, so every task that subsequently calls rtnl_lock() (such as ip, ovs-vswitchd, lldpad, IPv6 addrconf, and sshd) blocks indefinitely: the node may still answer ping, but its network control plane is unresponsive. Because triggering the deadlock depends on local conditions on a machine with qede hardware in this specific tunnel configuration, Red Hat rates the impact as moderate (CVSS 5.5, AV:L) rather than the network-vector severity of 7.5 assigned in the upstream CVE record. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and 7 are not affected because the vulnerable code, introduced when the qede driver was converted to the new udp_tunnel_nic infrastructure, is not present in those releases. The fix for the affected streams is currently deferred to a future update, so the residual risk remains that a TX timeout on an affected qede NIC with VXLAN/GENEVE tunnel ports can hang the system's network control plane.

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 do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base, or stability.