CVE-2026-97479

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's driver core subsystem. This issue may allow a local privileged user to cause a Denial of Service (DoS) by initiating device driver removal under specific dependency conditions. When a device is detached while its dependent supplier device is actively unbinding, the system issues an unexpected kernel warning, which can lead to a system crash if the operating system is configured to treat warnings as fatal errors.

Red Hat rates this Linux kernel driver core flaw as LOW severity for the affected Red Hat Enterprise Linux streams (kernel and kernel-rt), Red Hat In-Vehicle OS, and the RHEL CoreOS images used by OpenShift Container Platform. When a device is removed while one of its supplier devices is still in the process of unbinding, the driver core can emit an unexpected kernel warning in __device_links_no_driver() because the supplier's device-link state is legitimately set to DL_DEV_UNBINDING during a valid nested consumer/supplier removal sequence. A local privileged user with the ability to unbind device drivers or remove devices could trigger this warning under specific multi-tier consumer/supplier device-link conditions, causing a denial of service only on systems configured to treat kernel warnings as fatal (panic_on_warn); on default configurations the issue results in a warning message with no further consequence. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 is not affected because the code that emits this warning is not present in that stream, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 is out of support scope for this flaw. Fixes for the affected streams are currently deferred given the low severity of the issue; the residual risk is limited to an unexpected kernel warning, or a system crash only where panic_on_warn is enabled, reachable solely through privileged local driver-removal operations on hardware with the required consumer/supplier topology. The LOW Red Hat severity is lower than the moderate CVSS:3.1 base score of 5.5 would suggest because the underlying condition is a diagnostic false positive with no confidentiality or integrity impact, exploitation requires local administrative privileges and an uncommon hardware topology, and a crash occurs only in non-default panic_on_warn configurations.

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.