CVE-2026-98545

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's libata SCSI subsystem. When processing ATA pass-through commands to an ATAPI storage device, the kernel fails to properly validate the length byte returned in the device's sense response buffer. A malicious or faulty device can exploit this issue to trigger out-of-bounds memory reads and writes, leading to memory corruption, system instability, or a Denial of Service (DoS).

Red Hat has rated this vulnerability as having Moderate severity because successful exploitation requires either physical access to attach a crafted ATAPI storage device or administrative control over an emulated drive in virtualized deployments. The scope of impact is limited to local memory corruption causing system instability or denial of service, with no capability for remote exploitation. In addition, default deployments of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 and 9 do not contain the affected code.

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.