CVE-2026-97530

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's qla2xxx Fibre Channel driver. A remote entity on the Fibre Channel network can cause a Denial of Service (DoS) by transmitting frames containing specific payload data. The driver misinterprets matching data bytes within received frames as an indicator that incoming packets are pending, entering an infinite busy-wait loop. This behavior results in a CPU soft lockup, rendering the host system unresponsive.

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's qla2xxx Fibre Channel driver, affecting the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, 9, and 10 kernel and kernel-rt packages, Red Hat In-Vehicle OS kernels, and the OpenShift Container Platform RHEL CoreOS kernels. Red Hat rates the impact of this issue as LOW. When copying multi-IOCB responses, qla27xx_copy_multiple_pkt() and qla27xx_copy_fpin_pkt() polled the response ring for the RESPONSE_PROCESSED (0xDEADDEAD) signature at a byte offset that aliases with raw continuation IOCB frame payload data. An entity able to transmit frames on the attached Fibre Channel SAN can send a frame whose payload bytes at that offset equal 0xDEADDEAD, which the driver misinterprets as the continuation IOCB not yet having arrived, so the code spins indefinitely in interrupt/DPC context without advancing the ring. The result is a CPU soft lockup that renders the host unresponsive (denial of service); there is no impact on confidentiality or integrity. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Extended Lifecycle Support is not affected because the vulnerable code, introduced with the SAN congestion management implementation, is not present in that stream. Because this issue is rated LOW impact, fixes for the affected streams are deferred to future updates rather than shipped immediately; until a fix is released, systems whose Fibre Channel fabrics are accessible to untrusted entities remain at residual risk of a CPU soft lockup. The assigned CVSS:3.1 base score is 5.5 (Moderate), but Red Hat's overall impact rating is LOW because exploitation requires the ability to send crafted traffic on the adjacent Fibre Channel storage fabric rather than general network reachability.

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.

Exploitation requires the ability to transmit crafted frames on the Fibre Channel SAN attached to the host, so exposure can be reduced by restricting FC fabric access to trusted entities only, for example through switch zoning and port masking so that untrusted initiators cannot deliver frames to the affected host. Aside from such fabric-level access controls, 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.