CVE-2026-98586
Description
A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) subsystem. This vulnerability can lead to a Denial of Service (DoS) through a kernel crash. A race condition occurs between timer rearming and cleanup operations because the system modifies a timer before properly acquiring a reference to the associated transport object. An attacker able to generate SCTP traffic can trigger this timing window, causing a reference count underflow on an already freed memory object and resulting in system instability.
Statement
This vulnerability is evaluated as Moderate severity because successful exploitation relies on winning a race condition during SCTP timer rearming and teardown, resulting in a denial-of-service crash rather than arbitrary code execution or data leakage. Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems do not load the SCTP kernel module by default unless an application explicitly requests an SCTP socket or an administrator loads it. As a result, only environments actively running SCTP services are exposed to network-triggered crashes.
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 | 5.9 | N/A | N/A |
| Attack Vector | Network | N/A | N/A |
| Attack Complexity | High | N/A | N/A |
| Privileges Required | None | 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:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
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