CVE-2026-99181

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's autofs (automount file system) subsystem. A local attacker can cause a Denial of Service (DoS) by initiating file system lookups while the automount daemon is restarting. Due to mishandled errors from an obsolete communication pipe, the kernel incorrectly shuts down the newly replaced pipe, causing subsequent autofs lookups and mount requests to fail.

This vulnerability is rated as having Moderate severity for Red Hat enterprise environments because exploitation requires unprivileged local access and precise timing during an automounter restart, resulting strictly in the disruption of autofs requests without memory corruption or privilege escalation. Although the underlying autofs subsystem is present across Red Hat Enterprise Linux installations, active risk is limited to systems where automount services are deployed to handle dynamic mounts such as network file shares. Systems where automount daemons are inactive or not exposed to untrusted local users are not susceptible to this 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.