CVE-2026-98204

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's Synaptics RMI4 SMBus driver. When chunking write requests across the System Management Bus (SMBus), the driver miscalculates the remaining data length for the final block. A local user can exploit this issue to trigger an out-of-bounds read past the input buffer, leading to a kernel crash and Denial of Service (DoS) or the disclosure of sensitive memory.

This vulnerability is rated as Moderate severity because exploitation requires local access and depends on the presence of Synaptics RMI4 hardware communicating over SMBus. Typical Red Hat Enterprise Linux server and virtualized environments do not utilize this specialized input hardware, which substantially minimizes real-world exposure. While an attacker with local privileges on an affected laptop or workstation could induce a kernel denial of service or read uninitialized memory, arbitrary code execution is not possible through this flaw.

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 don't meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base or stability.