CVE-2026-97440

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's Qualcomm IPC Router (QRTR) networking subsystem. When processing resume transmission requests, a failure during control packet memory allocation does not properly release an acquired network node reference. A local user could exploit this condition under system memory pressure to cause a reference count leak, leading to resource exhaustion and a Denial of Service (DoS).

A low impact reference count leak was found in the Linux kernel's Qualcomm IPC Router (QRTR) subsystem. In qrtr_send_resume_tx(), a node reference acquired via qrtr_node_lookup() is not released when a subsequent control packet allocation (qrtr_alloc_ctrl_packet()) fails, so the function returns -ENOMEM while retaining the reference. A local user with access to the QRTR socket interface could repeatedly trigger this error path under sustained memory pressure, gradually leaking node references and exhausting kernel resources, resulting in a denial of service. There is no impact on confidentiality or integrity and no privilege escalation primitive.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and 7 (including kernel-rt on RHEL 7) and RHEL 8.4 are not affected because the vulnerable code is not present in those releases. Red Hat rates this issue Low severity because exploitation requires local access, depends on inducing memory allocation failures under memory pressure, and only yields a slow resource leak; this is lower than the CVSS 3.1 base score of 5.5 (Moderate), which reflects the worst-case availability impact. Because the flaw only mishandles a reference on an unlikely error path with limited practical exploitability, fixes for the affected RHEL, Red Hat In-Vehicle OS, and OpenShift Container Platform streams have been deferred to future updates; the residual risk is that a determined local attacker on an affected system could slowly consume kernel memory through repeated failed control packet allocations.

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.