CVE-2026-98614

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) subsystem. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability to cause a Denial of Service (DoS) by triggering an infinite loop during retransmission path selection. When all candidate network paths are in an unconfirmed state, the kernel fails to recognize the completion of its search loop, resulting in system livelock and CPU starvation.

This vulnerability is rated as Important because an unauthenticated actor can induce a kernel livelock and severe CPU exhaustion, rendering the host unresponsive without requiring elevated privileges. In standard Red Hat Enterprise Linux deployments, the SCTP kernel module is not loaded by default and requires explicit configuration or an active SCTP-enabled application to be exposed. The risk is primarily confined to environments that actively deploy SCTP networking services or allow untrusted local users to initialize SCTP sockets.

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.