CVE-2026-98375

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's Xen network frontend driver. This vulnerability allows a malicious host backend to cause a Denial of Service (DoS) by transmitting incoming network packets with an incomplete Ethernet header. Because the driver fails to verify that incoming packet buffers meet the minimum required header size, processing malformed packets triggers a kernel crash or an out-of-bounds memory read.

This vulnerability is rated Moderate rather than Important because exploitation is constrained to Xen paravirtualized guest environments and requires an untrusted or compromised host backend delivering crafted network packets. Red Hat Enterprise Linux deployments on bare-metal systems, KVM, or other non-Xen virtualization platforms are unaffected since the xen-netfront driver is not loaded. On affected Xen guests, receipt of a frame with an undersized header triggers an out-of-bounds memory read or a kernel panic, leading to guest 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 don't meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base or stability.