CVE-2026-98394

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's UNIX domain socket (af_unix) implementation. When a blocking receive operation is performed using a zero-length buffer and the peek flag on a socket where the last queued message contains out-of-band (OOB) data, the kernel fails to return properly. A local attacker could exploit this vulnerability to trigger an infinite busy-wait loop, consuming excessive processor resources and leading to a Denial of Service (DoS).

A low impact denial of service flaw was found in the Linux kernel's UNIX domain socket (AF_UNIX) implementation. When a blocking recv() call is performed with a zero-length buffer and the MSG_PEEK flag on a socket whose last queued message contains out-of-band (MSG_OOB) data, manage_oob() returns NULL but unix_stream_read_generic() does not exit its loop, resulting in an infinite busy-wait. A local unprivileged attacker able to create and operate AF_UNIX sockets could exploit this flaw to keep a thread busy-waiting in the kernel, consuming excessive CPU resources and causing a denial of service. This flaw affects the Linux kernel as shipped in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 and Red Hat In-Vehicle OS 2. The kernel and kernel-rt packages in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, 8, and 9, and the Red Hat CoreOS kernels shipped with OpenShift Container Platform, are not affected because the vulnerable code is not present in those versions. Because this is a local, availability-only issue that does not allow privilege escalation, information disclosure, or data corruption, the fix for the affected products has been deferred to a future scheduled update; the residual risk is that a local user could trigger sustained high CPU usage on an affected system until the fix is applied.

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.