CVE-2026-98537

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's workqueue subsystem. A local attacker can cause a Denial of Service (DoS) by inducing memory pressure that triggers an out-of-memory notification. During subsequent dependency checks, a worker thread not actively running a task dereferences a null pointer, leading to a kernel crash.

This vulnerability is evaluated as a Moderate severity impact because triggering the condition requires local authenticated access, complex timing, and extreme system memory pressure, limiting the blast radius strictly to a denial of service. The underlying flaw affects core kernel workqueue processing when an out-of-memory event interrupts worker pool thread creation. Because unprivileged users cannot easily orchestrate this specific sequence of memory exhaustion and thread management events, the risk of an unexpected crash in enterprise environments remains low to moderate.

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.