CVE-2026-98037

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's Berkeley Packet Filter (BPF) verifier. An improper validation check fails to reject untrusted allocated-object pointers after their protection scope expires, incorrectly recognizing them as valid live objects. A local user with permissions to load BPF programs can exploit this issue to pass invalid pointers to kernel functions, causing the kernel to dereference freed or null memory. This can lead to a Denial of Service (DoS) via a system crash or potential memory corruption.

This vulnerability is rated as Moderate severity rather than Important because successful exploitation requires local system access and elevated privileges to load extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) programs. Under default configurations in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, unprivileged eBPF is disabled, ensuring that standard unprivileged users cannot reach the vulnerable verifier logic. Consequently, an attacker must already possess administrative capabilities such as CAP_BPF or CAP_SYS_ADMIN to induce a kernel crash or cause memory corruption.

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.