CVE-2026-98119

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's netfs (network filesystem) subsystem. A local user could cause a Denial of Service (DoS) by triggering a system crash when performing unbuffered write operations under memory exhaustion conditions. This issue occurs because the kernel fails to verify that memory allocation for a write subrequest succeeded before attempting to initialize it.

A low impact NULL pointer dereference flaw was found in the Linux kernel's netfs subsystem. When a local user performs an unbuffered write to a file on a netfs-backed filesystem (such as 9p), netfs_prepare_write() does not handle a failure of netfs_alloc_subrequest() and then initializes members of the NULL subrequest, causing a kernel oops/panic and a denial of service of the system. Triggering the crash depends on the subrequest memory allocation failing, which normally requires severe memory pressure or fault injection and is outside the attacker's direct control, so practical exploitability is low. Although the Red Hat CVSS 3.1 base score is 5.5 (Moderate), Red Hat assesses the impact of this flaw as low because of this low practical exploitability. The kernel in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 and the kernel and kernel-ivos-qualcomm components in Red Hat In-Vehicle OS 2 are affected. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, 7, 8, and 9, including their kernel-rt variants, and OpenShift Container Platform are not affected because the vulnerable code is not present. Fixes for the affected streams are currently deferred given the low severity and limited practical exploitability of this denial-of-service condition; the residual risk is that a local user could crash an affected system when the allocation fails under memory exhaustion.

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.