CVE-2026-98556
Description
A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's Google Virtual NIC (gve) driver. A local user with raw packet access or an adjacent guest system can trigger a Denial of Service (DoS) by sending network packets with an excessively large segment size. The driver fails to validate the Maximum Segment Size (MSS) before writing it to a hardware descriptor during TCP Segmentation Offload (TSO), causing the size value to wrap or truncate to zero. This misconfiguration can cause network packet processing failures and disrupt network connectivity.
Statement
This vulnerability is rated as having Moderate impact for Red Hat Enterprise Linux because exploitation requires local access with raw socket privileges or a tap-attached virtual guest, limiting the attack scope strictly to denial of service on network transmission. The issue is limited to cloud environments utilizing the Google Virtual NIC (gve) device driver configured with DQO queues, meaning bare-metal deployments and systems running on other hypervisors are completely unaffected. Furthermore, confidential system data and system integrity remain uncompromised since the defect only results in packet handling errors and lost network communication.
Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details
Info alert:Important note
CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).
The following CVSS metrics and score provided are preliminary and subject to review.
CVSS v3 Score Breakdown
| Red Hat | NVD | cve.org | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base Score | 5.5 | N/A | N/A |
| Attack Vector | Local | N/A | N/A |
| Attack Complexity | Low | N/A | N/A |
| Privileges Required | Low | N/A | N/A |
| User Interaction | None | N/A | N/A |
| Scope | Unchanged | N/A | N/A |
| Confidentiality | None | N/A | N/A |
| Integrity Impact | None | N/A | N/A |
| Availability Impact | High | N/A | N/A |
Vector
Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Understanding the Weakness (CWE)
Other,Integrity,Availability
Technical Impact: Varies by Context; DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU); Modify Memory; Read Memory
When the quantity is not properly validated, then attackers can specify malicious quantities to cause excessive resource allocation, trigger unexpected failures, enable buffer overflows, etc.
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