CVE-2026-74741

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's ngbe network driver. In systems configured for non-MSI-X interrupt handling, such as legacy INTx or single MSI modes, a missing initialization of a pointer can lead to a NULL pointer dereference. This vulnerability can cause the system to crash, resulting in a Denial of Service (DoS).

A Moderate severity NULL pointer dereference flaw was found in the Linux kernel's ngbe network driver; Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat In-Vehicle OS are not affected. When the ngbe driver enables interrupts in a non-MSI-X mode, such as legacy INTx or single MSI, the wx->msix_entry pointer is not allocated or initialized, so the NGBE_INTR_MISC(wx) call dereferences NULL and crashes the kernel, resulting in a denial of service. The flaw was introduced by an upstream change that fixed IRQ vector selection when the number of VFs is 7, so only kernels carrying that change and configured with an ngbe device in a non-MSI-X interrupt mode can trigger the crash. Red Hat rates this flaw Moderate (CVSS 5.5, CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H), lower than the upstream CVEORG rating of 7.5 (Important), because triggering the crash depends on the local hardware and interrupt-mode configuration of the system rather than an unauthenticated remote attack. All Red Hat Enterprise Linux (kernel and kernel-rt) and Red Hat In-Vehicle OS (kernel and kernel-ivos-qualcomm) components listed for this CVE are not affected because the vulnerable code is not present in the shipped kernels.

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.