CVE-2026-97956

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's network failover driver, which can result in a Denial of Service (DoS). When a network slave device undergoes a name change, the driver invokes an open operation that attempts to reacquire locks already held by upper-level callers. A local user capable of triggering network interface configuration changes can exploit this condition to cause a deadlock, leaving the kernel unresponsive.

A flaw of low impact was found in the Linux kernel's net_failover driver, affecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 and Red Hat In-Vehicle OS 2. When a network device acting as a failover slave is renamed via rtnetlink, net_failover_slave_name_change() calls dev_open(), which attempts to reacquire a network device lock that is already held by the upper-level caller. This causes a deadlock that can leave the kernel unresponsive, resulting in a local denial of service. Exploiting this flaw requires local access with network administration privileges (CAP_NET_ADMIN) to trigger network interface rename operations, and a configured net_failover device, which limits practical exposure; for this reason Red Hat rated the impact as Low even though the CVSS 3.1 base score of 5.5 corresponds to Moderate severity. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, 7, 8, and 9, as well as OpenShift Container Platform releases, are not affected because the vulnerable code is not present in those streams. The fix has been deferred for the affected Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 and Red Hat In-Vehicle OS 2 streams because of the low practical exploitability; the residual risk is that a local privileged user on a system with a configured net_failover device could trigger a kernel deadlock and cause a denial of service.

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.